JLo: ‘The bodies we see have changed — and I helped’
Back when Kim Kardashian was still in high school, a then unknown but unashamedly curvy Jennifer Lopez became the original trailblazer in an industry dominated by wafer-thin women.
Stellar
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The year: 1998. The town: Hollywood. Jennifer Lopez, an ambitious newcomer, is strategising her way to the top of the heap, but she’s not there yet, not even close.
Sure, she scored a Golden Globe nomination for her first leading role in Selena the year before and has just managed to steal the spotlight from George Clooney in Out Of Sight. But Lopez has bigger plans. She wants to change things, she tells anyone who will listen.
In the era of the waif, when super-slender English model Kate Moss is the epitome of beauty and Kim Kardashian’s rear end is still sitting behind a high-school desk, Lopez is unashamedly flaunting her curve.
When Clooney is paid millions more than she is, she calls out the gender pay gap. At a time when most faces on television and in films are still overwhelmingly white, Lopez proudly celebrates her Hispanic roots and campaigns for roles beyond the standard maid or best friend.
And this is all before Lopez debuts music that drives the Latin pop breakthrough in the Western world, shifts the celebrity fragrance industry into overdrive and inadvertently inspires the creation of Google Images when she wears that now-famous eye-popping green dress to the Grammys.
Two decades after that late-’90s foray into an industry she would indeed help to change, as the now-49 year old sits down with Stellar she reflects that the goal she set for herself way back at the beginning has been well and truly kicked.
“I do feel like things have changed,” she says.
“There are so many Latina actresses and actors from different backgrounds working now, and the bodies we see have changed dramatically from 20 years ago. I feel like I was at the forefront of that, not by trying to do that, but just by being myself and saying: ‘This is how I grew up, and this is who I am.’ I identify with the women in my family, the girls I grew up with. It’s a different thing [to the mainstream]. I was made to feel good about that by my family, so I was able to go out into the world and be proud of that.”
Lopez may have been many things — dancer, actor, singer, producer, talent judge, entrepreneur, wife, mother — over the 20-something years she’s been in the spotlight, but the one thing she’s been throughout it all is, fiercely, herself.
“People say, ‘Oh, one person can’t change things …’ but it’s not true. If I just concentrate on being my best self, and doing my best, somehow that impacts other people.”
With her goal of changing the face of popular culture now achieved, Lopez would be forgiven for wanting to have a little rest. But, on the cusp of 50, she insists she’s only hitting her stride, with projects aplenty in the pipeline, 10-year-old twins to raise, and a romance that is refreshingly short on drama.
The world Lopez now inhabits is far removed from New York’s working-class Bronx, where she was raised with two sisters by her Puerto Rican parents before catching her first break in 1991 as one of the Fly Girls who danced between segments on the US sketch comedy series In Living Color. (Her choreographer? Another Puerto Rican-American named Rosie Perez.)
Yet all these years and millions of dollars later, Lopez is sticking to the credo that defines one of her most recognisable pop hits: we shouldn’t be fooled by the rocks that she’s got.
She may no longer be working class, Lopez concedes, “But I am still working my arse off,” she insists.
“Listen, I lived in the Bronx until I was 23 years old. It’s like when you’re from Italy. Just because you don’t live there anymore, you’re still very Italian. That’s who you are. It’s like it was yesterday that I was there. And even though I’ve travelled the world and been everywhere and I live now in Los Angeles, I’m still just a girl from the Bronx deep down. I love working the way I do, and luckily I have a good work ethic.”
And it has paid off. Lopez has earned $65 million this year — in part thanks to a record-breaking Las Vegas residency that wrapped just a few days before she joined Stellar on a sunny terrace at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.
She’s tired, she admits, but Lopez Inc. never takes a break: yesterday she was continuing to shoot the second season of TV competition World Of Dance, which she executive produces and judges. And then there is her new film Second Act, which marks another double whammy: she produced it and she’s also the star.
The fish-out-of-water tale follows Maya Vargas, a 40-year-old assistant manager at a supermarket whose street smarts aren’t giving her the opportunities she wants, and don’t often come the way of older Latina women without a higher education.
Lopez immediately related to the storyline, developed by her longtime producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas.
“If you don’t get those opportunities from your parents, [but] you’re talented, you’re smart, you’re ambitious … you have to find your own way in,” she says, before pausing and opening the discussion to include her boyfriend, former New York Yankees baseball player Alex Rodriguez.
“It’s funny; Alex loved it the most because he got drafted when he was 18 and always hated that he didn’t go to college. He is in the private-equity world now. And everybody we meet, all the people that work for him and me, are all [educated at] Harvard. We found our way, you know, and that’s what Maya does.”
Since the start of her career, Lopez’s romantic life has been an endless source of fascination. She has been married three times: there was Ojani Noa, the Cuban waiter from the early years who was stopped from publishing a tell-all book about their marriage; the back-up dancer Cris Judd, who lasted nine months, and her longtime-friend-turned-groom, singer Marc Anthony, with whom she has two children and remains on good terms.
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But it was two other high-profile relationships that dominated headlines to the point of distraction. Puff Daddy (as he was then known) was the man by her side when she wore the infamous Versace dress at the 2000 Grammy Awards, and by her own admission she was left devastated by a broken engagement to actor and two-time movie co-star Ben Affleck in 2004. (Another first Lopez can claim: “Bennifer” started the name-mashing now commonplace for celebrity couples.)
Her relationship with Rodriguez is, Lopez says, based on maturity and respect, and allowances for the occasional disagreement.
“We’re two people in our 40s and we’re set in our ways. And he’s an alpha and guess what? I’m an alpha, too,” she laughs.
“So we butt heads at times, but the truth is we’re mostly on the same page. We love and support each other as much as we can, and we understand how important those things are because we are older now. It’s nice to hit your stride with somebody who can keep up with you. The sky’s the limit, I think.”
That’s just one of the affirmations that Lopez, a fan of self-help guru Louise Hay, drops during our conversation. Another: “Me and my children have an exciting life full of joy and love, and we want for nothing.”
The 2008 birth of twins Max and Emme coincided with a lull in her career, with box office and music chart disappointments that dogged her for more than three years. Publicly she put on a brave face, but in private there was serious self-reflection.
In 2011, just as she’d launched her comeback with a hugely popular judging role on American Idol and became the face of cosmetics giant L’Oréal, she and Anthony announced they had split.
Those years were a turning point, Lopez tells Stellar.
“[Motherhood] made me start examining what I was doing to myself, and how I was letting people treat me. And once I was a single mum, I was like, ‘OK, it’s just us, so how am I going to do this great?’ All of that stuff made me dig down — you need to figure yourself out, have balance, be better, work harder. So many things kicked into gear for me. And it’s been great since then.”
The wins included new chart hits, the launch of her highest-selling fragrance, clothing lines, homewares, the development of her production company and a world tour. It was the start of JLo 2.0.
“I just didn’t give up,” is her response when asked why she thinks she’s still on top.
“I just kept going and I didn’t get stuck. It was important for me to keep growing. I knew I had issues, I knew I could do better in relationships and how I worked, but I was working too much at times to the point of my own detriment. I had to figure out a balance of so many things. You can always be better somewhere. So I just keep doing that.”
Female friendships are, she says, at the heart of what makes her life feel like a good one. She scrolls through her phone to find a photo of a group of her girlfriends piled onto the bed, Lopez make-up free in the middle.
“I am surrounded by women — my producing partner, my mum, my sister, my best friends.” Longtime friend Leah Remini, who also appears in Second Act, says that for all the bling and big dreams, her 49-year-old confidant is pretty normal.
“When I go to her house, she makes me coffee and she makes me dinner, and when she comes to my house, I make her coffee, I make her dinner,” Remini tells Stellar.
“It’s a real relationship grounded in real love and respect for each other. It doesn’t even matter if she was working, if she’s in the middle of something; if you text her, or call her and say I need you, she’s there.”
Her friends and her fans might sing her praises, but Lopez’s success has always been more of the popular variety than of the critically acclaimed. Yet she tells Stellar she doesn’t particularly care.
“I try not to measure things that way, because it can make you crazy, right? And make you bitter. And I’m not bitter; I’m super happy that I still have so many opportunities at this time in my life.”
Instead she prefers to revel in the next-level confidence that comes with age, experience and ploughing through the rough times.
“It took me a long time to get to the point where I really gave myself credit and felt confident about what I do and who I am. It’s such a different world for me now and I’m so happy. I wish I would have found that in my early 30s, but I didn’t — it takes time. Now I just feel like this is what I do. It’s not a mistake. It’s not a fluke. I’ve been doing it for 20-something years. You’re good at it. Give yourself that credit and soar.”
* Second Act is in cinemas on Thursday.
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Originally published as JLo: ‘The bodies we see have changed — and I helped’
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