‘I DON’T COUNT MY FIRST TWO MARRIAGES’ Jennifer Lopez opens up about love, life and her new film

The powerhouse that is Jennifer Lopez talks her new film, wedding plans and beauty secrets

She’s an icon of her generation and for Jennifer Lopez, she’s only getting better with age. With her incredibly varied and rich career spanning over 30 years, it’s hard to pin JLO down and place her in a category. The Bronx-born beauty started off as a Fly Girl dancer on TV show In Living Color and then transitioned to acting, starring in Selena, earning her first Golden Globe nomination, and in Out of Sight with George Clooney. Proving she could do it all, JLO then tried her hand at music and released the first of eight albums, On the 6, which propelled her to superstardom. Three decades later, at 49, JLO has a production company, launched fragrances, been married and divorced three times, and has given birth to twins, Max and Emme, and is now happily in love with former baseball player Alex Rodriguez. Here, in an exclusive chat to WHO, Lopez talks about getting married to A-rod, staying fit and why she loves her new film Second Act.

It’s been 20 years since Out of Sight came out. How have you changed since then as an actress?

I think I have grown so much as an actress since then and I was very proud of the work I did in that movie and at that time. But I don’t know, I am just such a different person

now. I am so different than I was then and I have obviously had kids since then and have gone through a divorce since then, and it’s a lot of stuff that has changed my way of life and my thinking and my emotions and depth of understanding of the world. All of that makes you a better actress at the end of the day, understanding people and behaviour.

Do you think about having a real-life Second Act?

Move to the south of Italy?

Yes?

Little house by the water, painting, yeah. I fantasise about things like that. I don’t know if I could ever do it. I am such an American girl in that way and as much as I love visiting, I don’t know if I could live anywhere else.

How do you relate to your character Maya?

The idea for this script came from my producing partner and she worked with a writer and it was tailor-made for me. We made her from Queens, because I had done the Bronx thing before, but we wanted it to have a Working Girl type of feel. It was very much something I could play and understand and people would really relate to me and believe me. I loved playing it because I really feel like Maya at 24 years old is exactly who I could have been if I hadn’t decided to go off and be an actress and do everything I am doing.

If you were to start a second act, would you consider getting married again?

Yeah. For sure.

So that’s something you feel good about?

Yeah. I have been married three times and I have had two kind of under a year marriages and that I don’t really

count as marriages, but I was married to Marc [Anthony] for 10 years, seven years together and then 10 years before it was final and it was good, and it didn’t work out, but it didn’t destroy my vision of marriage. I always thought, again, ’cause of the way I was raised, that when you fall in love with somebody, you get married and you try to have a life together. And I learned along the way that’s not really how it works; it takes more than that. So you have to choose well and there’s a lot of different things. I love the idea of growing old with somebody and being committed to them and declaring that to one another, not so much to the world, but to one another.

And it’s important for your partner to fit in well with your kids.

Oh sure. Everything is about them and you want somebody around who understands children and is capable of loving children, and who knows how to treat children and at the end of the day, really cares and is a caring person. You can’t have any random, selfish person come in your life when you have kids. You can’t be careless.

Do you think your kids will follow in your footsteps?

I don’t care what they want to be. I want them to be happy, I want them to be fulfilled and love themselves. That’s my thing, how do we do that and how are we good people here, right now? But yeah, they both sing, and I don’t know what else they will do, they don’t dance, but they sing [ laughs]. They are adorable.

The film shows that street smarts can be more important than a university degree. Do you agree?

I do think that. I think it gives you a certain tenacity, a certain drive, when you grow up with nothing and you don’t grow up with the privileges of going to a great school and your parents don’t have money to send you to those expensive colleges, so it gives you a different upbringing. It makes you a little more scrappy and a little more savvy in different ways. In the streets, you have to find a way in, even if it’s slipping in the back door. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. If somebody said you could go back now and go to Harvard instead of doing what you did, I would say, “No way!”

As a Latina woman, did you find it more difficult finding work in the beginning?

Yeah. I think being Latina in this business is a huge challenge, even today. They were not considering people like me for roles in The Wedding Planner or Maid in Manhattan and that was a place I had to break through and say I just want to be the girl in the movie. I don’t want to be the Spanish girl who is the friend over here or the maid, even though in one of my biggest movies I played a maid! But I wanted to be the protagonist regardless of nationality. Another breaking of boundaries for me was that there was a really specific type of woman that was in magazines and movies, and they were usually white, tall, size zero or two, and I was not like that.

Lastly, you turn 50 next year and you look absolutely incredible! Tell us how.

The skin and the beauty side, I have some skincare secrets that I might be sharing in the next year, we’ll see. But again, it’s all about looking after yourself and I work really hard. I have kids obviously, and that takes up a lot of time. You can’t be good for anybody if you don’t take care of yourself. So, I try to get good sleep and take care of my skin and take a bath every once in a while. I am not a smoker or a drinker or anything like that. And I just try to relax and be the best me that I can be.