Jennifer Lopez takes on Super Bowl at 50
business ... to believe this girl can do more.”
The year after Selena hit theatres, she starred opposite George Clooney in the thriller Out of Sight — a role that for many critics showed she had acting bona fides.
And then in 1999, Lopez dropped her debut album On the 6. It included the mega-hits If You Had My Love, Let’s Get
Loud and Waiting for Tonight.
A pop star was born.
Her parents thought acting was a dead-end for Latinas. Her agents kept insisting that she choose between singing and acting. Lopez refused and the rest is history.
JLo, as she is more or less universally known, has sold tens of millions of albums worldwide, including more than 10 million in the US alone. Concerts on her last tour were nearly all sold out.
Her acting career has run the gamut, from the mega-flop Gigli with former beau Ben Affleck to her acclaimed performance as Ramona in Hustlers, a film she also produced.
She earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role, which featured an athletic pole dance that left tongues wagging — and many thought she should have won an Oscar nod.
Lopez’s personal life has kept her in the headlines, even when her acting and music careers have been relatively quiet, especially her relationship with Affleck, which sparked the term “Bennifer”.
But her three marriages so far, including to singer Marc Anthony, have ended in divorce. After she gave birth to twins Max and Emme in 2008, jobs were few and far between.
Then came what Lopez calls her career’s second act — her decision in 2011 to join the reality competition show American Idol as a judge.
“You can’t hide on reality TV,” she told Variety.
“And they got to see I was a real, caring person who was actually nice.”
She recorded songs with Pitbull and Cardi B. She starred in television police drama Shades of Blue. And then came Hustlers.
Last year, she even walked the catwalk for Versace, in a reimagining of a classic barely-there dress she wore 20 years ago to the Grammys.
With Rodriguez, now a sports broadcaster after a long career in baseball, Lopez says she has found harmony between her professional and personal lives.
Her next act after the Super Bowl? She’s mulling a turn at directing — still rather a rarity for women in Tinseltown. The project is drug lord drama
The Godmother, in which she also is set to star.
Meanwhile, Lopez and Shakira plan to use their Super Bowl halftime show to pay a tribute to the NBA All-Star Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash last week, Reuters reports.
“I think this is just affecting everybody so much because it is reminding us, again, how fragile life is and how we have to appreciate every single moment,” Lopez said. “It can be taken away from us so easily.
“We have to love each other, we have to be together, we have to support each other we can’t be so at odds all the time. That’s part of our mission and our message too.”
The halftime show, an event unto itself, typically features many of the world’s top-selling artists.