Early life at 7:34 AM

Alba was born in Pomona, California to Mark Alba who is of Mexican-American descent and Cathy Jensen of Danish, French-Canadian, English and Italian descent. Alba was raised in an Air Force family, along with her brother, Joshua Alba, and her grandparents until she was sixteen. She grew up a sports fanatic. Her father’s Air Force career took the family to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Del Rio, Texas, before they settled back in California. Alba’s early life was marked by a multitude of physical maladies; she suffered collapsed lungs twice, had pneumonia 4-5 times a year, a burst appendix, a cyst on her tonsils and asthma. This served to isolate her from other children at school because, as she claims, she was in the hospital so often that no one knew her well enough to befriend her. She also revealed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that she suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder as a child. Her health improved, however, when her family moved to California.

Alba had expressed interest in acting since the age of five. She took her first acting class at age twelve, and an acting agent signed her nine months later.