The best Jessica Alba movies and TV shows include everything from horror movies and superhero efforts to action thrillers, TV shows, and more. Alba started as a child actor when she was 13 and starred in the movies Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack. This led to her picking up her first major television role when she was only 19 and starred in the James Cameron-produced action series Dark Angel.

Since that time, Alba has starred in everything from comic book movies like Sin City and Fantastic Four to horror films like The Eye and romantic comedies like Valentine’s Day. While she has received praise for several roles she has played throughout her career, it has not resulted in many awards. At the same time, she has faced criticism, including picking up Razzie Award nominations in 2006, 2008, and 2011. Despite this, Alba’s work remains popular, and she continues to take on big roles on the big and small screens.

10 Honey (2003)

Honey Daniels

One of Jessica Alba’s first attempts at a starring role in a movie came in the 2003 release, Honey. Alba stars as Honey Daniels, a woman who works as a bartender, record store clerk, and dance teacher. However, her dream is to become a hip-hop dance choreographer. When she finally gets her big break, it takes her away from her friends and community, and she realizes that she might need to make a choice between happiness and fame.

The film had a lot of famous musicians involved, including Missy Elliott, Ginuwine, Jadakiss, and more. However, critics were mostly let down by the story, giving it a low 21% Rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite the pan, many critics praised Alba for her performance and the energetic dance numbers strung throughout the film while offering a positive look at the hip-hop world. It was also a small box office success, helping Alba gain more attention in her young movie career.

9 The Eye (2008)

Sydney Wells

In the 2000s, there were several Hollywood remakes of successful Korean and Japanese horror movies. While The Ring was a massive success and The Grudge also did well, The Eye was mostly disappointing to fans of the original horror movie. In this story, a woman who has been blind since she was five learns that she can have a cornea transplant that will give her eyesight again. However, the new cornea implants also allow her to see visions of people dying.

She soon learns that she can see tragedies and deaths before they happen, but when she tries to help stop them, no one believes her, and it puts her life in immediate danger. Critics gave the movie mostly negative reviews, mostly comparing it to the superior Asian horror movie, while Alba received a Razzie nomination for her performance. Despite this, she also had her fans, as she won the Choice Movie Actress – Horror/Thriller Award at the Teen Choice Awards.

8 Fantastic Four (2005)

Susan Storm / Invisible Woman

In 2005, Jessica Alba got her chance to play a superhero in the Marvel Comics movie Fantastic Four. Alba played Susan Storm, The Invisible Woman, in this Fox-produced Marvel movie about the first heroes to ever appear in the comic book line. In the film, she teams up with her boyfriend Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic), brother Johnny Storm (The Human Torch), and friend Ben Grimm (The Thing) to stop the villainous Doctor Doom and save the world.

The film received terrible reviews, most considering it a step down from the recent comic book movies based on the X-Men and Spider-Man. However, that did not stop fans from turning out to see it, as it brought in $333.5 million on a budget of under $100 million. It also received some awards recognition at the Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film and the MTV Movie Awards, with Alba nominated for Best Hero.

7 L.A.’s Finest (2019-2020)

Nancy McKenna

Jessica Alba’s most recent TV role came in the Spectrum series L.A.’s Finest, which was a spinoff series from the Bad Boys movie franchise. Alba stars as Detective Nancy McKenna, a former career criminal who is now a police officer and a working mother. She partners with Gabrielle Union’s Special Agent/Detective Lieutenant Sydney "Syd" Burnet, a former DEA agent who is now working in the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division.

What connects the show to Bad Boys is that Syd is Marcus Bennett’s (Martin Lawrence) sister, and she appeared in Bad Boys II while working for the DEA. The series ran for two seasons and 26 episodes before Spectrum canceled it. Critics mostly dismissed the series, but once again, it had a younger fan base, as Union won the Teen Choice Award for Choice Action TV Actress, while Alba was also nominated for the same award.

6 The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Joyce Lakeland

Jessica Alba starred in the 2010 crime drama The Killer Inside Me, based on the novel by Jim Thompson. Casey Affleck leads as Lou Ford, a West Texas deputy sheriff who is a pillar of his community on the outside but is actually a violent man who has a history of sexually assaulting women and covering it up. When Lou believes that someone killed his little brother, he sets out to find out the truth and involves a sex worker named Joyce, played by Jessica Alba.

The movie was a violent and horrific tale of a man whose violence knows no bounds, and that turned off many critics. It did receive a slightly positive critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, with pundits praising the look and design of the film, but many felt the violence toward women was too graphic. Critics also praised Alba’s performance as the abused Joyce, although she also received a combined Razzie nomination for the four movies she appeared in that year.

5 Idle Hands (1999)

Molly

In 1999, a young Jessica Alba starred in the dark horror comedy Idle Hands. The movie centers on a teenager named Anton (Devon Sawa) whose hand is cut off his body and then develops a mind of its own and goes on a long and deadly killing spree. Jessica Alba stars in the movie as Molly, Anton’s love interest and the woman he has to save when the hand comes for him and all his friends.

Idle Hands was a box office flop, making only $4.2 million on a $25 million budget, and was destroyed by critics, rating it at a very low 18% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the critics who appreciated the film praised its irreverent attitude and several jokes that hit the mark, specifically when dealing with the marijuana, the off-kilter kills and gore, and the cast knowing what exactly kind of movie they were trying to make.

4 Machete (2010)

Special Agent Sartana Rivera

In 2010, Robert Rodriguez took a fake trailer he made for Grindhouse and turned it into a feature-length movie. Machete stars Danny Trejo as a former Mexican Federal who couldn’t stop a powerful drug lord from killing his wife. Three years later, he is no longer a Federal but is offered $150,000 to kill a U.S. Senator who is allegedly rounding up immigrants and deporting them. However, it was a setup, and now Machete has to clear his name by any means necessary.

This movie was shot as a grindhouse film, with Rodriguez purposefully damaging parts of the print and delivering over-the-top dialogue and violence to fit the format. For that, he purposefully cast Jessica Alba as Sartana Ribera, a “beautiful Immigrations officer” who has to decide whether she will help Machete or bring him in. Critics praised the movie for hitting the mark as an exploitation flick, and the Machete received a sequel, with Alba ing the cast once again.

3 Never Been Kissed (1999)

Kirsten Liosis

In 1999, Jessica Alba ed the cast of the Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Never Been Kissed. In the movie, Barrymore is a 25-year-old newspaper copy editor named Josie who goes undercover at a high school to help report on what is really happening in the classrooms. However, she ends up miserable and has a run-in with three popular girls who treat her horribly as soon as she shows up in school.

Jessica Alba stars as one of these mean girls, Kirsten Liosis (the other two are Jordan Ladd as Gibby and Marley Shelton as Kristin). The rom-com received mixed reviews, with most of the praise going to Barrymore’s charm and performance. Alba, who was only 17 when making the movie and still a year away from her fame on Dark Angel, also impressed in her role.

2 Sin City (2005)

Nancy Callahan

In 2005, Jessica Alba ed the cast of the comic book adaptation Sin City. Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller (who wrote the comics it was based on), the movie was shot mostly in front of a green screen with the comic s replicated in the background of the scenes. The film is broken up into vignettes, with each telling a story in Sin City, tied mostly together by Bruce Willis’s Detective John Hartigan.

Jessica Alba stars as Nancy Callahan, an exotic dancer working in Basin City who becomes involved in the criminal underworld until she is saved by Hartigan. She appears in the "That Yellow Bastard" segment and was so popular that she returned for the sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, where she had a much larger role in the segment titled "Nancy’s Last Dance". Alba won Sexiest Performance at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards.

1 Dark Angel (2000-2002)

Max Guevara

Jessica Alba became a star thanks to one movie role. She took on the role of Max Guevara in the science fiction television series Dark Angel, a property created by James Cameron (Terminator, Avatar). Max was a runaway genetically enhanced super-solder who escaped when she was a child. The series was released in 2020 but took place in the “future’ year of 2019, when the world was a dystopian society full of danger and intrigue.

The series only lasted for two seasons and 43 episodes while airing on Fox. Out of all of Jessica Alba’s performances in movies and TV shows, this was the one that received the most praise. She won a Best Actress Award at the Saturn Awards, was nominated for the Golden Globe Award, and took home the Teen Choice Award for TV – Choice Actress.