The Body & Soul of Jessica Alba

She is good-humored about the scrutiny, but she confesses the one-note quality of it all is starting to wear her out. "The scripts I get are always for the whore, or the motorcycle chick in leather, or the horny maid," Alba says as she climbs a hill, panting slightly. "I get all these screenplays that start, 'Tawnya is in the shower. The water streams down her naked, perky breasts.' " She sighs, then laughs a tired laugh. "I don't think this is happening to Natalie Portman."

There are many reasons for this, and Alba, to her credit, has a firm grasp on most of them. Cast as she is, she hasn't yet had much opportunity to "act." The closest she comes to a scene-stealing turn is as one of the popular snots in Never Been Kissed, where she is indisputably funny and natural. The rest of her curriculum vitae -- including schlocky thrillers, the short-lived James Cameron sci-fi television series Dark Angel and the ill-conceived hip-hop-heroine picture Honey -- is less impressive. Her turn in Sin City stands out, but largely because Alba plays a stripper with a heart of gold. And a lasso.

"It's not always so great to be objectified," she says. "But I don't feel I have much of a choice right now. I'm young in my career. I know I have to strike when the iron is hot."

Alba plans to capitalize on her God-given assets for the moment, saturate the market with her sultry image and then, when she "won't have to do that stuff just to get people's attention," she hopes to transition into someone like Diane Keaton or Goldie Hawn, women she admires for their kookiness and pluck. "I look forward to the day when I can do a small movie and act," Alba says, "and it's not about me wearing a fucking bathing suit or chaps."