It's hard to believe it's been only six years since Jessica Alba captured fan boy hearts the world over as Max, the genetically-engineered, super-sexy super-soldier star of James Cameron's Dark Angel series. Fast forward to 2008 and the 26-year-old has the Hollywood game down pat, top lining films like Good Luck Chuck, two Fantastic Four films, and this week's horror film, The Eye.

But while the remake of the Pang brothers' original film is indeed Alba's first foray into the world of horror, she's been careful to avoid the trappings of exploitation cinema that the genre has trended toward in recent years. Instead of torture victims, Alba's character Sydney Wells encounters tortured souls -- souls who she can see, a la The Sixth Sense, after inheriting a pair of corneas from a supernaturally-gifted donor. Adding more texture is the fact that Alba's character is a blind violinist, two additional challenges to the actress, who learned to live without sight and perform like a concert soloist for the role.

We spoke with AskMen's No. 1 Most Desirable Woman about her role and how she chose The Eye as her first psychological thriller, about her violin skills and the humbling experience of researching her role with real-life corneal transplant patients. And while the expectant mother admitted she had "pregnancy brain" talking to the press, she let us know that she is, and always has been, a die hard science nerd. We see a Scientific American's Most Sexiest Woman Alive Award on the horizon.


Can you describe your character for people who haven't seen the movie?

Jessica Alba: I play Sydney Wells; she's a blind classical violinist, she's a soloist, and she has a corneal transplant and gains her sight, and when she gains her sight she also takes on the memories and abilities of the woman whose eyes she got. So she ends up seeing people who are dead, and also she's psychic and can kind of see the future -- more tragic things, not really positive, great things. So she's sort of plagued with this ability, or horrible thing, and she feels like she's losing her mind because she can't really touch base with what's real and what's not. And also, she's seeing for the first time so it's hard for her to get a grip on it.

What attracted you to the project?

JA: The fact that I got to play somebody who was blind, and a violin player -- it was pretty complex, for a horror movie. I liked the fact that it was a psychological thriller, and not necessarily a gore-fest. It wasn't really about someone being tortured, it was about someone losing their sanity and trying to get it back. I thought the story was pretty interesting, and layered, and the relationships that she had with her sister, and her doctor, Alessandro [Nivola]'s character, were pretty unconventional.




Did you actually spend time with blind people, to research the character?

JA: It was pretty intense. I spent time at two blind orientation centers, one in L.A. and one in New Mexico. The one in New Mexico I was with about twelve other students that were fairly young, late teens early twenties, some of them were parents, some of them were just kids, who either had immediately become blind from an accident, and others were slowly becoming blind. They were all trying to learn how to deal with the blindness; I was an actress coming in, they had no idea who I was, they just thought I was another student. You know, I can take my mask off and walk away, and they couldn't...so that was kind of difficult to deal with, and quite humbling. But I learned how to read Braille, I learned how to walk with a cane, I learned how to get around, label my clothes, label things in the house from the stove to the microwave to the sink, hot cold, you label absolutely everything in the house.

Did you meet with anyone who regained their eyesight and explained what it was like for them to take in the world for the first time?

JA: I did meet a few people who had had corneal transplants; one who'd gained his eyesight and then lost it again, and someone else who had a degenerative disease, and was losing [her eyesight] and had a corneal transplant and got it completely. The guy who wrote the script -- it's pretty true how disorienting and difficult it is to take in everything at once, everything brand new. It really plays tricks on your mind and your perception of things is...so altered, when you bring in this element that you just aren't used to.

Had you seen the original movie?

JA: Yes, of course. I enjoyed the original, and I really enjoyed the main character's stoic performance. I thought it was very subtle and quiet, and quite elegant. In Eastern culture, ghosts and mysticism and spirits are part of culture and more accepted, and in Western culture it's just not. People think you're insane if you believe in ghosts, and it's just completely unacceptable to say that you're seeing stuff. And so we took a more Western approach because, obviously, we're doing a Western version of it.

What was your biggest challenge in playing someone who's blind?

JA: Becoming sighted, and playing the violin blind was tough. Because I did so much training on that violin, and not being able to look at the notes while I was playing them and having to just know them by feeling...ah, that was impossible!




Did you really play it?

JA: Yeah, I did. I mean I had to; they said in post they just had someone come in and play all the notes that I was playing to make it sound nicer, because [I sounded] really bad. Like, very screechy and very high pitched and bizarre. But the notes were there. I played the notes and I played the rhythm, it just sounded...really bad.

How long did you have to train, with the violin and the Braille?

JA: About four and a half months, but I was shooting another movie. So I had Fantastic Four, and then I had Christmas break, and over Christmas break I kind of really got into it.

Had you seen the directors' [David Moreau and Xavier Palud] horror film, Ils?

JA: Yeah. That was why we hired them; the fact that they did a whole movie with virtually no dialogue that was very scary, and thrilling. You're going on this journey with these two people who are being chased in a house. It was so inexpensive, and they made it really entertaining. We wanted them to bring that element to this movie; we had the complicated character, we had the plot twists, and we really needed them to infuse the scary into the film.

What are some of your favorite scary movies?

JA: Well I do like Nightmare on Elm Street, the first one. I like Psycho, Poltergeist, The Birds, It, Rosemary's Baby...kind of more like ghosts and demons, and stuff like that, less like a psychopath coming to rip your body apart.