Articles & Interviews
Ladies' Home Journal January 2003
Jennifer Lopez is taking a rare break from a packed schedule that includes filming her next movie, recording an album and shootting a music video. We're in her airy hotel suite in Philadelphia and yes, she'll come and sit down in a minute, but first she has to have a private word with Ben. That would be Ben, as in Affleck, with whom she has set up a temporary home while the two film their second movie together, Jersey Girl. They huddle together, noses practically touching, and confer in low tones. Then, he turns ad politely introduces himself: "Hi, I'm Ben" and disappears into the depths of the sprawling suite.
After Ben leaves the room, Jennifer Lopez, actress, singer, fashion designer and international sex symbol, settles into the couch and curls up, tucking her bare feet under her. She's wearing a chocolate brown workout suit from her very own J.Lo clothing line and her hair is casually pulled back.
"I'm very happy where I am right now," Lopez says. "I feel like I'm in the right place for the first time ever and I want to make time for that, for me, as a person, and for the people around me that I love--I want to give all that is fair share.
"I feel like if you act in the right way and do things with a certain integrity and humanity, you get to a place where it's rewarded," she says. "I think all human beings at one point get to a place where they're like, 'Well, okay, this it it.' It takes some people longer than others. Some people never find it, and some people are always searching."
She warms to her subject. "And I feel like, for the first time, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. This is so much different from anything else I've ever experienced as far as balance and peace and happiness in my life--not having everything be all about work and having that define who you are.
"I knew that work would never be the fulfillment of my heart and soul, although I love it," she continues. "But it can't comsume you. It's not real. The passion to create is real. That's the good part. That's the part you never want to let go."
Does the "good part" also have anything to do with the exquisite jewelry she's wearing--including a square pink diamond on her left ring finger? Does it have meaning? "Yeah, I would say so," she answers, smiling coyly.
Does she want to break some news? "I don't know," she says, though she's clearly tempted to spill. "I'd like to be a little more mysterious than that. I guess we can wait a little while."
She may not want to talk about grooms in particular, but she's happy to talk about marriage in general. "I still believe in the idea of getting married and sharing your life with somebody and building a family--absolutely," Lopez says. "That's how I grew up, so I believe in it. I've seen it, I know it exists. It's just a matter of finding the right person to do that with."
Is Ben, as in Affleck, the right person? all she says is, "It feels really right. It's realy great."
Jennifer Lopez has a lot of good in her life right now. She has a new album, "This is Me...Then," and her new Cinderella-story movie, Maid in Manhattan is just opening in theaters. In it, Lopez plays Marisa, a Bronx-born single mother who, while toiling as a chamber-maid at a fancy Manhattan hotel, meets a handsome young politician played by Ralph Fiennes. When the two first see each other, she's out of uniform and he mistakes her for a guest at the hotel. Quickly, the maid and the millionaire fall for one another. After the truth about Marisa's job comes out, comedy and romance ensue.
Lopez felt at home in the role in several ways. First, it brought out her own inner maid. "I'm a neat freak," she confesses. "I really like to have everything in its place. Ben always laughs at me because I do things like put shoes next to each other. I like everything neat and serene, peaceful, a lot of white and a lot of light," Lopez continues. "Gloomy makes me sad." She decorated this temporary home herself with rich earth-tone couches and square leather ottomans. She also decorated her homes in Los Angeles and Miami, which she shares with two dogs, Boots and Raina. "Ben is building a place in New York, which we'll have there," she adds.
Her movie-star life, complete with three homes, is a long way from her childhood upbringing. Like her character in Maid in Manhattan, she's a Bronx, New York, native. "I new exactly who this character, Marisa, was because I had the same exact background," Lopez says. "She's Puerto Rican, traveling from the Bronx into Manhattan on a daily basis." Lopez took the number six subway train into Manhattan ever day for classes and auditions. "I could relate to the whole feeling of knowing that there is this big city and all this opportunity out there and then going back to the Bronx, which is this small little world," she says.
Her parents, David and Guadalupe Lopez, raised their girls to work hard and dream big. (Her sisters are Leslie, a music teacher, and Lynda, a TV reporter for WNBC in New York.) "My mom instilled in me that I could be anything I wanted to be," Lopez recalls.
"While Lopez has been described as ambitious at an early age, she says she was simply driven to perform. "Ambition denotes a need for power or money, but for me, those were never the motivating factors. It was more a real need to perform, to express myself as an artist, which sounds really friggin' corny but it's true."
As a young girl, Lopez went every day to the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, where she studied dance and singing and performed in musicals and dance reacitals. She didn't always land the lead, but she loved the experience anyway. "it taught me what it took to do these shows and do them well," she says.
And she learned confidence, too. "There were times when I was like, What am I doing? I'm not one of these prodigy people. I'm just this person from this small neighborhood in the Bronx and what makes me think that I'll be able to do movies or sing?" she adds. "But you've got to believe in yourself, because not a lot of other people will."
At age 16, Lopez was cast in a small role in a movie with Mary Stuart Masterson. Her big break came n 1991, when she was hired as a dancer on the Fox Variety series In LIving Color. Her first leading film role was as a cop in 1995's Money Train. Two years later came her breakout performance as the title role in Selena, about the murdered Tejano star.
Suddenly Lopez was white-hot. Her movies since have included Out of Sight with George Clooney and The Wedding Planner, with Matthew McConaughey. She met Affleck in 2001 on the set of the upcoming Gigli. They play co-kidnappers who get invovled while on the job.
Lopez is among the rarest of movie stars because she has a simultaneously successful career in music. Her three previous albums have sold a total of 20 million copies worlwide and have won her, among other awards, an MTV Video Music Award for Best Dance Video. The video for her recently released song, "Jenny from the Block," features her with none other than--you guessed it--Ben!
In an industry that typecasts talent, Lopez has managed to move between genres and both ethnic and American roles. "My main concern in the beginning was that, as a Latina, people would cast me only in certain roles and I would get put in a box," she says. "I fought with a lot of people and I went through a lot of bull with a lot of people. If I'm part of any business it's because I have a passion for it," Lopez says. " For me it isn't about the money."
And Lopez hasn't stopped at two careers either. In 2001, she formed Sweetface Fashion Company with Andy Hilfiger (Tommy's younger brother). The company produces her self-designed clothing line, J.Lo, and her new perfume, Glow by J.Lo, both of which are available in department stores. "I love all girl stuff," she says. "I love perfume and clothes and shoes and decorating. Designing for J.Lo gives me the same adrenaline and creative energy that songwriting does."
But Lopez would be happy not to keep decorating different homes. She dreams of settling down one day with her Prince Charming and having children. "A bigger blessing I don't think God has for us, so I really look forward to it when it does happen," she says.
Lopez is philosophical about her earlier attempts to start a family and her failed marriages--first to Ojani Noa, a restaurant manager in 1997, then to Cris judd, a dancer, in 2001. "You go through what you're meant to go through," she says. "It's not all going to be rosy beautiful apple orchards along the way. We make choices for reasons we think are good. And you have great intentions at the beginning and they don't turn out right and it hurts and it's wrong and you stumble and you fall.
"But I don't regret anything," she adds. "I really feel good about the way I've handled these situations."
Lopez says she still believes in the institution of marriage and looks forward to one that lasts. "I've been married and I've gone through the ceremonies and I"ve gone into them with the best intentions," she says. "But I don't feel like I've had a marriage yet. I don't know what that is yet. Both times it's happened to me
have been less than a year, so I can't say I'm an expert on it."
"It all has to be about being a good person," she continues, "about living your life in a certain way that you feel respectful of yourself or you have certain peace about you," she says. "So not matter what happens--if this fame goes away, if somebody passes, you still feel okay with who you are."
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