interview - JESSICA ALBA and DANE COOK

As good a sport as she seems to be about her misadventures in Maxim lad culture, Alba is wary of being objectified. For example, she famously pried an apology out of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner for running a shot of her in a bikini from Into the Blue on the magazine’s cover, which she protested gave the false impression that she appeared nude inside.

And make the mistake of referring to her lariat-twirling Sin City heroine Nancy as a stripper, and Alba will politely, but firmly, set you straight. “I was a dancer with a heart of gold!” she says with a slight laugh, adding that she hopes to reprise the character in a planned sequel. In the odd way that movies like this sometimes do, Cook suggests, Good Luck Chuck may actually earn Alba respect for more than her sexy looks.

“Well, she is one of the most beautiful women on Earth,” he acknowledges. “But she’s a really sweet and very deep person, too, very intelligent. And then we get on the set, and in this role she had to really go for it. And she rocked. She’s not afraid to kind of look the fool and she did the physicality tremendously.

“I mean, we’re in a business where I always have to say good things about the people around me, I have to find the best in them. But I can say, without any of that, it’s like when I watched Cameron Diaz in Something About Mary for the first time. Jessica gives that kind of comedic performance; I think she’s that wonderful.” Cook has his own image problems to worry about. There has been a noticeable backlash to his ubiquitous media presence.

Besides being accused by fellow comics of borrowing their jokes for his chart-topping Retaliation CD, Cook’s mic was reportedly cut when he refused to leave the stage in time for another comedian to perform at Vancouver’s Yuk Yuks comedy club last summer (he was filming Good Luck Chuck in British Columbia at the time). There is also a growing chorus of critics who just find his humour and screen presence irritating.

For the most part, Cook shrugs off the negative stuff as a natural outgrowth of popularity. “Once the ride is really rockin’ and movin’ there are parodies or ‘This guy’s saying this about you,’” he says. “All the hoopla, the flutes and whistles and everything going off, the distractions …those things all go along with a form of success. But if we were all interested in what people working at Raytheon [an American defense company] were doing, these same things happen there. Y’know?”

Cook, who grew up in a large, Catholic family outside of Boston, Massachusetts, admits that he has to battle insecurities. “I’ve had to do positive affirmations,” he confesses. “I had to learn to look at myself in a mirror, look right into my pupils and be like, ‘You’ve got worth, Man. You have something to say. Don’t listen to the superfluous crap. You’re not in elementary school anymore.’ It’s not about who’s coolest on the playground. It’s about being real and honest and raw with your emotions.”

For the clearly self-confident Alba, who grew up in an ethnically mixed military home, the trick now is to keep demonstrating her versatility and capabilities.

“Just exploring different sides,” says the actor who, case in point, learned to play violin for her next film, a remake of the Asian horror The Eye.

Cook, too, has a chance to display a more sensitive comedic persona in his other autumn release, Dan in Real Life, a romantic comedy with Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche.

But if you ask him, Cook might say that he’s already achieved movie immortality by being able to claim that he’s not only played opposite Alba, but also the equally luscious Jessica Simpson (Employee of the Month) and Jessica Biel (London).

“I’ve worked with all the Jessicas!” he crows, sarcastically but nonetheless proud. “A hat trick of Jessicas! I’m hoping to do something with a CGI’d Jessica Tandy next.”

Bob Strauss is an L.A.-based writer.