How to call a ActionResult method in controller before light box pops up?

So, do you want light box to open after the new page opens? In that case, you need to have some hidden value to indicate that the light box should be shown, bind it to a model, and on $(document).ready open the light box. Or you can use $.ajax to perform some action on the server and then on success display the light box.

Check out this fiddle for an example:

http://jsfiddle.net/6sV8K/[^]

Without using either of these 2 methods, a plain anchor tag could only redirect you to an url.

In case I am missing something post your comments to my answer or update your question!