Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com

SteveGranitz/WireImage.com

James Devaney/WireImage.com

Jessica Alba and Jamie Foxx by Jamie McCarthy/WireImage.com

Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com

Andy Paradise/WireImage.com

3.1.06 - TVGuide.com: According to papers obtained by TheSmokingGun.com, Jessica Alba is threatening to sue Playboy for using a bikini-clad photo of her — from the movie Into the Blue and obtained in an "outrageous, unethical" manner from Columbia Pictures — n its March cover, thus making it appear that she is featured in a "nude or semi-nude pictorial." Arguing that the cover has caused the actress "immeasurable harm," Alba's lawyers demand that Playboy cease distributing the issue and tender a monetary settlement for the image's unauthorized use.

1.17.06 - Click here for a picture of Jessica Alba arriving at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards, and click here for a picture of her presenting an award with Luke Wilson..

Jensen Ackles by Frank Ockenfels/WB

by Matt Webb Mitovich

When last we tuned in to WB's freshman frightfest, Supernatural, bogeyman-busting brothers Dean and Sam Winchester had fended off the insanity of an old, shuttered asylum only to come home to a phone call from their perpetually MIA father. The action picks up right from that instant with this week's new episode (airing tonight at 9 pm/ET). Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean, shared with TVGuide.com a preview.

TVGuide.com: Were you happy when Supernatural got picked up for a full season so early on?
Jensen Ackles: Yeah, it's always a crapshoot with the whole television thing in general, so the fact that we had a nice little buzz and had the powers-that-be pushing for us gave us the confidence we needed to move ahead and put us in the frame of mind we needed to be in for the remainder of the season.

TVGuide.com: Especially since there is so much mythology to delve into. You must have been like, "This could be a really awesome show if...."
Ackles: If we get the right support and it's done right. And so far, I think everybody has made every effort they can to really get this show off and running the way we all want it to be.

TVGuide.com: I have to wonder, does it get lonely being just you and Jared [Padalecki, Sam] in every damn episode? Do you corner the writers and go, "Can't we get a bartender buddy or something?"
Ackles: [Laughs] Oh, trust me. When [Warner Bros. Television president] Peter Roth and I had dinner about a month ago, he said, "So, the show's doing really, really good, everybody's really happy.... How do you think we can make the show great?" "Add. More. Characters." is the first thing I said. [Laughs] But that's what we signed on for — we knew it would be just Jared and I, and that it would be a very demanding schedule, and it definitely has been. It hasn't let up. I think I've had one day off since July. The cool thing about it is that Jared and I really get to work hard and, in the same breath, we get to meet and see and work with new people each week. It's a new town, a whole new story, new people, so in a sense that's something kinda cool that we have that a lot of shows don't.

TVGuide.com: Do you guys never film during the day, or does the show just do a great job of simulating darkness and murkiness?
Ackles: Everything that you see inside is generally done during the day and then, of course, our night shoots are either cheated a bit or we wait until the sun drops. But we shoot in Vancouver, where the sun goes down quite early. It will be 4:40 in the afternoon and it's dark already.

TVGuide.com: I thought my ears spied Canadian accents on some of the guest stars. I was watching "Asylum" and that blonde girl.....
Ackles: What, did she throw in an aboot?

TVGuide.com: Something like that. I was like, "A-ha, I see we're shooting in Canada."
Ackles: It's funny, I've actually had to grab the script supervisor — who is Canadian, so it doesn't register to her the way it does to me — and tell her, "You've got to watch these accents, they're starting to kick up," and then she'll go tell the actor. There are only a few of us who can really catch it, and if we're not around....

TVGuide.com: What bogeymen are left to tackle this season? Can you tease anything about what's coming up?
Ackles: I know that there's some good stuff coming up with the father....

TVGuide.com: At the end of "Asylum," he's on the other end of the telephone.
Ackles: Exactly, so that's going to start becoming much more relevant. There's such a pool of these [bogeyman] stories that Erik Kripke, the writer and creator, has come up with....

TVGuide.com: And you don't want to burn through them all in Season 1.
Ackles: And we're not, either. Erik is just this mad genius in L.A. who kind of locks himself in the writers' room and comes up with all of this awesome stuff. I have every confidence in him in the world.

TVGuide.com: What did you and Jared get for a Christmas bonus? Your own '67 Chevy Impalas?
Ackles: [Laughs] That would have been nice! I think that's maybe the fifth season, if we get there.

TVGuide.com: You got some wimpy Supernatural wall calendar, didn't you?
Ackles: We all got jackets and stuff... and we also got a couple of days off earlier than we were supposed to.

TVGuide.com: Let's talk about your three previous extended runs on television: Dark Angel, Smallville and Dawson's Creek.
Ackles: I kind of felt like a bit of a pinch hitter on those shows. They were already established, and I was just kind of coming in to do whatever they needed to be done.

TVGuide.com: It was almost a "prolonged screen test" until the day got your own show, wasn't it?
Ackles: Yeah, exactly. [Laughs] They were just kind of "using and abusing" me to make sure I could handle the pressure and the whole situation. But it was good. After Dark Angel, [Fox] made me the lead of a series called Still Life. We shot the pilot, they picked it up for seven episodes, and then they decided to shelve it. There was a big change in command, and [the new entertainment president] cleaned the slate of anything that was pending, so we got lost in the shuffle.

TVGuide.com: They should put the seven episodes out on DVD, cash in on your Supernatural buzz.
Ackles: Hey, that'd be the smart thing to do. But who knows what the suits are thinking these days?

TVGuide.com: Getting back to Supernatural, do you ever worry that Dean is too quippy? That maybe his attitude undercuts the tension?
Ackles: That's a very delicate balance you've got to find, because at the end of the day this is a horror show, and you really have to make it believable. To do that, you have to really be scared and you have to really react to these things. The only difference between Dean and anybody else reacting to it is that this is what he's been living, breathing, eating and sleeping for most of his life.

TVGuide.com: Plus, the humor is probably a sort of coping mechanism.
Ackles: He's definitely got the cocky facade covering up a lot of what's going on underneath. That's a cool thing about him — he's a bit of an onion, and in each episode you start peeling layers and layers off. Sometimes I really have to think, "OK, I'd like to make this nonchalant and funny, but I don't want to miss the point that this is a very serous issue I'm dealing with." It's a delicate balance.

TVGuide.com: Have you ever been to the funky official Supernatural website?
Ackles: Yeah, that's cool as hell. I pop around in the trunk, the glove compartment....

TVGuide.com: I was just there for the first time and it's crazy!
Ackles: It is crazy. In fact, I do these things every now and then where I'll go and record a voice-over or an outgoing [phone] message, or a message to my dad, that they'll play on the webpage. They're really going to make that an integral part of the show. I know they've set up an actual phone number and an e-mail address that are used on the show, and people are calling and leaving messages and e-mails. People at Warner Bros. are going through them. It's been a really cool response.

TVGuide.com: Is your girlfriend too scared to watch the show?
Ackles: I'm currently a single guy, so the only women in my life are my sister and my mom, and yes, they definitely watch the show and yes, they definitely get scared!

Alimi Ballard by Robert Voets/CBS

by Matt Webb Mitovich

Alimi Ballard, who played Herbal Thought on the cult hit Dark Angel, is these days playing someone who could not be more different: tough-as-nails FBI agent David Sinclair on CBS' Numbers (Fridays at 10 pm/ET). What does the actor make of the hit series' brain-busting twist on TV procedurals? Why didn't he merit a spot on the Titanic? And what lesson did he learn from an Oscar winner? TVGuide.com asked Ballard those questions and more.

TVGuide.com: When you saw that Numbers was a procedural with a complicated math hook, were you like, "This can't fly"?
Alimi Ballard: The first time I got my hands on this script, that was the first I had heard about this project. And when I read it I saw that it was so tight, the weaving together of these math geniuses and the way they see the world in numbers — the way the wind moves, the trajectory of birds, all these calculations and equations overlapping with how FBI guys see serial killers, how they view the world in what people are doing and their intentions. I was very impressed. I was like, "Whoa! Who wrote this?!"

TVGuide.com: Oh, so you figured, "I have to be a part of this."
Ballard: It was smart and it was well crafted in a way that it didn't feel like these odd pieces coming together. I was impressed by that alone. This was the only thing that I read that pilot season and I was like, "I really hope I get this!" [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: While Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz' smarty-pants are off doing the math thing, you and Dylan Bruno (as Colby) solve crimes the old-fashioned way.
Ballard: I love that! We kick in doors and blow things up! I hate to be a kid about that, but me and Dylan, man, we get to fly through windows and stuff. We're the first ones in. I'm a guy who grew up watching kung-fu movies — Bruce Lee is one of my idols — so that kind of physical stuff is exciting, especially as it relates to them catching criminals.

TVGuide.com: David and Colby also have an entertaining verbal interplay.
Ballard: Oh, yeah, we're like peas and carrots. [Laughs] I do like that as well, how they made us from different worlds with slightly different points of view. We'll choose to [approach a crime scene] differently 95 percent of the time.

TVGuide.com: Yet always wind up on the same page, like when they worked together to find a bullet that had been shot straight up into the sky.
Ballard: Yes, yes. We were arguing over what kind of gun the guy would have, going over all that stuff.... It was really fun, man.

TVGuide.com: So the big question: How good are you at math?
Ballard: I think I'm average, in all honesty. [Laughs] I'm a guy who was like a C, B student. I was good at it, but I had no passion for it.

TVGuide.com: It wasn't the stronger half of your SAT score, I take it?
Ballard: No, man.... Actually, wait a minute — I was pretty good at the math part! It was all the reading stuff that bored the crap out of me! [Laughs] All the reading and grammar, I was like, "Kiss my a--, man."

TVGuide.com: Your first TV role was in 1993, as Frankie Hubbard on the soap opera Loving. Talk about initiation by fire, huh?
Ballard: Absolutely. I got this gig and it was incredibly hard work. People laugh at soaps, saying they're full of "bad acting," and I'm like "Ha!" If you had to produce the volume of work these guys do every day, that is a feat. Most people don't know how hard it is to do that and then be good. The soap actors that get really famous because they're really good are incredible actors.

TVGuide.com: What's more, you were on Loving as it morphed into The City, which tried to be groundbreaking by shooting entirely on location and with hand-held cameras....
Ballard: It was a lot of fun, and I got to work with one of the best actors I've ever seen, Debbi Morgan. Oh, man, she is just a versatile actor, you see a lot of that in Eve's Bayou. She gave me a three-year "class" in watching her work and just copying everything good I saw. It was a really great experience.

TVGuide.com: What do you think about your Dark Angel pal, Jessica Alba, becoming little Miss Thing?
Ballard: We had a great time up there in Canada, shooting. Working with [Dark Angel creator] James Cameron and working with Michael Weatherly, whom I'd worked with on Loving — he ran me over in his Range Rover and I blackmailed him for money. [Laughs] And Jessica, she is a nice young lady. If it's what she wants to do, she'll be huge. She could go off and be a rocket scientist, that's how talented I found her to be.

TVGuide.com: Years later, did you call James Cameron and say, "Can't a brother die on the Titanic?"
Ballard: I didn't, actually! [Laughs] No, no, I'm not the biggest water fan, so all of that would have freaked me right out!

TVGuide.com: You did, though, get to do another big-budget film, Deep Impact.
Ballard: That was my first big movie, and I was really intimated and scared as crap.

TVGuide.com: Did Tea Leoni hold your hand at all?
Ballard: She was really nice, a sweet lady, and yeah, she helped me out. I really treasured that experience.

TVGuide.com: Lastly, what did you learn working with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert De Niro on Men of Honor?
Ballard: That you can win an Oscar, man, and still be a great dude and be as approachable and kind and warm as the day you first started out. I will never forget working with Cuba Gooding Jr., ever. Ever. Ever.

Mario Magnani/Getty Images

Jessica Alba courtesy MGM Studios

by Matt Webb Mitovich

In Honey, she danced until she couldn't dance no more. In Sin City, her stripper did wonderful things with a lasso and chaps. In Fantastic Four, she was out of sight as Invisible Woman Susan Storm. And now, in the thriller Into the Blue (in theaters Sept. 30), Jessica Alba once again has put her mettle to the metal, playing the self-sufficient lady love of a treasure hunter (The Fast and the Furious' Paul Walker) who unwittingly digs up big trouble on the Caribbean seafloor.

So, considering all the above, when is Alba going to give herself (and her body) a breather? "I'm with you on that!" she tells TVGuide.com, laughing. "I actually thought, in my really delusional mind, that I was going to get paid to hang out in the Bahamas and scuba dive for four months. 'Hmm, that's not a bad job.' And then I realized we'd be shooting in the winter, with wild sharks in every single scene that's in the water."

The actress also got a surprise from her Into the Blue wardrobe (and in a way that will undoubtedly delight many male theatergoers). "I thought we'd be wearing wet suits — because if we were real divers, we'd have on wet suits — but they were like, 'It's the summer.' I said, 'Is it summer in the movie? Because right now, it's cold!'"

But even with the less-than-balmy temps and the less-than-practical bikinis, Alba enthusiastically dove into her role and the many underwater and action scenes. "The essence of the movie, and the reason I wanted to do it, is that it's a real page-turner," she tells us. "I read the script in 45 minutes and was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Plus, I knew it was going to be gorgeous."

Having starred on the mid-'90s version of TV's Flipper, Alba was no stranger to scuba diving or communing with aquatic life — although she admits she is more used to dolphins than to their angry, sharp-toothed ocean mates. "Sharks are pretty terrifying animals, because they're not very bright and they're pretty much blind, so they don't see the difference between you and a fish. So the [Jaws] theme song is in your head the whole time," she says. "Paul was fearless, he didn't mind them, but I was like, 'I need my fingers! I don't want them to bite me!'"

Her Into the Blue heroine, however, is made of tougher stuff — a quality Alba sought to emphasize by amping up an otherwise typical "guy saves the girl" scenario. Recalling a sequence that would have left her character MIA for much of the third act, she says, "I said to [director] John [Stockwell] and the writer, Matt [Johnson], 'I think I'm probably the most experienced person here in doing action, soooo... what if I talk to the stunt coordinator and figure out something for me to do?' I mean, girls get rescued at the end of the movie all the time. So I literally came up with the action sequence with the stunt guy. Before, I was just waiting for Paul to come save me."

Alba can't help but acknowledge that many of her recent roles have demanded she be in picture-perfect shape and, in some cases, play up that fine form in promotional materials. "I don't think I play 'super-hot chicks'; I think I play people who happen to be in bathing suits," she explains. "For some reason, everyone sort of emphasizes me being 'the sexy one,' but in this I'm the sweet girl next door!"

Then, getting back to our original point, she says that her next project, the independent film Awake (in which she costars with Hayden Christensen), will offer a most welcome relief from butt-kicking duty. "I have not had as many opportunities to do the kind of acting that I have wanted to do and that I am trained to do," she points out. "That's why I'm doing Awake, which is character driven. I don't have to wear a bathing suit or chaps or a superhero outfit. And hopefully people can see that I'm not just somebody who sells movies."

9.27.05 - Zap2It.com: Alba Has 'Fantastic' Hopes, Craves More 'Sin' Although she'd been anointed a rising star on several occasions, Jessica Alba's media profile next converted into box office dollars before this spring. Clad in chaps and equipped with a lasso, Alba's stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold Nancy was one of the main selling features for Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's "Sin City," as the graphic novel adaptation raced to just under $75 million at the domestic box office. Then in a clingy super-suit (and flirting with invisibility), Alba was front-and-center in the promotion for the comic adaptation "Fantastic Four," which has cleared $150 million. Both films were ensembles, but Alba was a prime beneficiary of their successes. Still, her role in future sequels is still in limbo, but the 24-year-old actress seems ready for future "Fantastic" adventures and to "Sin" again. More...

11.8.04 - Jessica Alba has signed on to star in and produce the futuristic drama Sonic, reports Variety. She'll play a young waitress who dies suddenly but is brought back to life just in time for the lunch rush.

7.14.04 - Jessica Alba has been cast as the Invisible Girl in "Fantastic Four," 20th Century Fox's adaptation of the Marvel Comics classic. Alba rounds out the crime-stopping quartet, which includes Ioan Gruffudd as Mr. Fantastic, Chris Evans as The Human Torch and Michael Chiklis as The Thing.

6.9.04 - Matt LeBlanc's upcoming Joey spinoff is down one friend. Ashley Scott (Asha) -- who was set to play Joey's sexy (and married) next-door neighbor in Los Angeles -- has been let go and the role will be tweaked and recast. Variety reports that the character will now be single and serve as a potential love interest for Joey.

11.25.03 - From TV Guide Online Caught in the Act: We're in the Honey: Jessica Alba and Missy Elliott promoted their new film in New York City.

8.6.03 - Pictures of Jessica Alba attending the Teen Choice Awards at Yahoo: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22

5.15.03 - Jensen Ackles's (Alec) new drama, Still Life, has been picked up as a mid-season show for next season by FOX.

5.14.03 - Michael Weatherly's new drama, Navy CIS (the JAG spinoff), has been picked up for the fall season by CBS and will air on Tuesdays at 8pm ET.

3.20.03 - Michael Weatherly has been cast in the JAG drama spinoff pilot on CBS which concentrates on Naval Criminal Investigative Services.