JENNY FROM THE BOX..
SHE’S been married three times and is currently engaged for the second time to Ben Affleck – no wonder Jennifer Lopez describes herself as a “hopeful romantic”.
The 52-year-old has had huge success as an actress and a singer but romantically it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster.
She’s never given up on love, though – as well as being married three times, she was due to wed American baseball player Alex Rodriguez but cancelled the 2020 ceremony twice because of the Covid pandemic before they split up.
She said: “I describe myself as a hopeful romantic.
“I think you keep your head down, you take that journey, believe that you deserve certain things, that you are a good person and that if you treat people right, the right things will come into your life.
“That doesn’t mean that we don’t have tough moments. I certainly have in my life and my career but I kept believing.”
In April this year, she and Ben – known as Bennifer back in the noughties – announced their second engagement 20 years after the first proposal.
They had planned to marry in 2003 after meeting in 2002 on the set of Gigli. She put him in the video for Jenny from the Block and wrote an album about him, This Is Me...Then.
But four days before the wedding, they postponed it – later, JLo claimed Ben hated the media scrutiny around it and they split in 2004.
JLo, who had already been married twice, to Cuban waiter Ojani Noa and backing dancer Cris Judd, went on to marry singer Marc Anthony, giving birth to twins Emme and Maximilian in 2008.
Ben married actress Jennifer Garner after meeting in 2004 on the set of Pearl Harbor and they have three children together. The marriage ended in 2018. Ben had been dating actress Ana de Armas before rekindling his relationship with JLo.
Jennifer calls her relationship with him a “second chance at true love”.
It sounds like the catchline of a film.
No wonder then the Latino superstar from New York loves doing romantic comedies like this year’s Marry Me, The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan and Out of Sight, her breakthrough film in 1998.
She said: “I think rom-coms give hope and they show what I think life is really about – finding somebody to love and spend your life with.
“I think people still love watching them, especially right now with everything that is going on in the world.”
Despite a successful acting and music career – including three UK No1 singles, Love Don’t Cost a Thing, Get Right and On the Floor – JLo is living in the moment, brought on by the twist of fate that reconnected her with Affleck.
She said: “I’m just excited to be living in the present.”
However, on Tuesday we will get a chance to look back as JLo takes stock of her life and career in new Netflix documentary Halftime.
It shows her doing the 2020 Super Bowl with Shakira, although she was not happy at sharing the stage and time with someone else, calling it the “worst idea in the world to have two people do the Super Bowl”.
It also shows her performing
Even when I’m training hard for a movie, I still have a cookie JENNIFER LOPEZ ON FINDING BALANCE IN LIFE