Alba has eye for the hard yard

Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba learned a little something about acting “discipline” when she did that TV show that made her a star, James Cameron’s Dark Angel.

“Three-hour-long workouts, every day, for two years,” she says of the 2000-2002 sci-fi series that had her playing a super-buff super warrior, all curves and spandex.

Tough? Sure. But that was nothing compared to what she had to put herself through for her latest, The Eye.

She plays a blind violinist who has her sight restored, only to see dead people in addition to the living ones.

She had to be convincingly musical. She had to be convincingly blind.

“I've never done anything this hard in my life,” says Alba, 26.

“Every orchestra musician I talked with told me, ‘Oh, it’s the hardest instrument to play’ - and they were right.

“Everything was a challenge, from the positioning of the violin on my neck to bowing. And I’m having to learn to do this with my eyes closed!”

For the fourth Alba movie to come out in the past 12 months, she had to find a little prep time.

And not just to watch the 2002 Japanese J-horror film she was remaking, either.

“The directors (David Moreau and Xavier Palud) are huge classical music fans.

First off, they gave me all these Mozart and Beethoven CDs to listen to.

“Then, I looked at lots of tapes of (violinist) Anne-Sophie Mutter.

I picked up a lot of things from just watching her, the way she holds her head, her posture when she's holding the instrument, her bowing, the look she gets on her face. So passionate!

“Then, I took six months of violin lessons. That was the killer. Vibrato (a pulsating variation in pitch) just, oh, it gave me the hardest time.

“Then, I visited the New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the Braille Institute’s Los Angeles’ sight centre to learn about blindness, to observe.

“I met this great girl, Jessica, a blind student at Boston University, followed her for a long time. Blindness is not a limitation to her, not that I could tell. She was focused, meticulous, wants to be face to face with you when you talk. If she’s wearing sunglasses, you can’t even tell she’s blind. She speaks three languages and has a level of determination about her that just inspired me.”

All because she wanted to follow her thriller, Awake, and raunchy comedy, Good Luck Chuck, and superhero adventure, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, with a horror movie.

“I’m a fan of the genre,” she says.

“But not those movies where women are just victims, you know. Tortured or whatever. This is just a good old-fashioned ghost story, with a new twist. Scary!”

Alba’s frequent inclusion on lists such as People’s 50 Most Beautiful and Playboy, Maxim, E! and Stuff’s world’s sexiest and her determination to work all the time have made her an easy target of the resentful.

And critics. Many of her recent films haven’t earned the best reviews, prompting the Golden Raspberry Foundation to nominate her for three Razzies this year for her last three films.

But they - we – won’t have Alba to kick around much, soon.

She’s pregnant, and if nothing else that will cut back on her productivity.

“I don’t know if I’ll want to go straight back to work after having the baby, or not,” she says of the child she is expecting with Cash Warren.

“We really are just winging it. I have no plan, no idea how I’m going to work the career around this motherhood thing.

“I do know this, though. Whatever I choose to do, professionally, it’ll have to be something I’m so passionate about that I can’t not do it.”

The Eye opens in Australia this week.

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