J-LO: “Marriage takes a lot more than sharing a home”
Singer Jennifer Lopez opens up about her past love dramas, new happiness with Alex Rodriguez and her thoughts on walking down the aisle for a fourth time
She found love with baseball player Alex Rodriguez in 2017 – celebrating their two-year anniversary last week with a romantic tribute to him on Instagram, gushing, “You make my world a more beautiful, safe and stable place.”
But despite her happiness, Jennifer Lopez admits she’s in no rush to tie the knot again, following three failed marriages.
The 49 year old split from her first husband, waiter Ojani Noa, in 1998, and second husband, dancer Cris Judd, in 2002. Then she saw her seven-year marriage to singer Marc Anthony – with whom she has 10-year-old twins, Max and Emme – come to an end in 2011.
Looking back, she admits, “I had waited a long time to have kids and then suddenly I had young twins and I was getting divorced from Marc. I had to do a lot of selfreflection about what I was going through, why I wasn’t happy in my life, and what I needed to do about it.
“I also saw that I had to stop thinking that other people were responsible for my happiness. It was up to me to rely on myself and love myself first in order to be able to be happy. That’s what I needed to do so I would feel more confident about myself, have faith in myself. That would enable me to be a more open person so that I would be able to meet someone and feel good about sharing my life with someone else.”
CONFIDENCE
Appearing to play down the idea of walking down the aisle with Alex – who is a father to Natasha, 14, and 10-year- old Ella with ex-wife Cynthia Scurtis – she says, “Among our children and work and all the wonderful things that happen, we are really living our best years. We are grateful for this and we do not need anything else at the moment. We have to do things at our own pace.”
But her relaxed attitude to the idea of marriage doesn’t mean she’s not committed to Alex – whose exes include Madonna and Cameron Diaz.
She says, “I think I’ve understood that marriage takes a lot more than just falling in love and sharing a home together. In my case, my first responsibility is my children and making sure as a mother I’m creating the best possible home for them. That means you need someone who not only understands you, but understands children and is willing to love them as much as you do. But I’m hopeful of being able to spend the rest of my life with someone and being committed in that way to each other.”
SCRUTINY
J-LO – who was born and raised in The Bronx, a notoriously tough district in New York – found fame as a dancer on US TV show In Living Color in 1991, when she was 22.
After making her big break into acting in 1993, she received her first Golden Globe nomination for her leading role in the 1997 biopic Selena and, in 1999, ventured into music with her hugely successful debut album On The 6. In 2014, she became the first female to received the Billboard Icon Award and is said to now be worth over £290m.
Although she’s enjoyed success and accolades, the star admits she struggled to cope with the scrutiny of living in the
limelight early on in her career.
She says, “After I had had some success, I suddenly saw a lot of criticism being thrown my way and it made me start to doubt myself. There was all this talk that I wasn’t really an actress, that I wasn’t really a singer, and after a while that stuff starts to wear you down.
SELF-BELIEF
“I’m very sensitive and it was hard for me to avoid focusing on the negative things that were out there instead of looking at the positive. You lose faith in yourself. I told myself, ‘You know that you have the talent and the drive to keep being successful, that you have a lot of fans out there who love and support you.’ So I started believing in myself again.” As well as her talent, J-LO – who stars in new movie Second Act – is also renowned for her ageless beauty and incredibly toned body. Opening up about her fitness regime, J-LO – who had her own Vegas residency from 2016 to 2018 – admits, “I’ve always taken pretty good care of myself. I make sure I do intensive workouts at least three or four days a week, because I can see the results and I feel a lot better when I’m in shape. I also needed to train very hard while doing my Las Vegas shows, because I had to be extra fit to get through each performance. It’s like you’re a boxer training for a fight. But it really pays off and, as you get older, it’s even more important to put in the extra hours of training to keep your body toned. “I started out as a dancer and I remember whenever I arrived at the gym in the morning, I would spend as many hours as I could there. I would train until the point of exhaustion. So I have the mentality to be able to push myself pretty hard.”
‘I had to stop thinking other people were responsible for my happiness’