OK! ICONS JENNIFER LOPEZ
AS SHE DAZZLES ON HER ‘IT’S MY PARTY’ TOUR, WE CELEBRATE THE INCREDIBLE CAREER OF MULTI-TALENTED JENIFFER LOPEZ
Singer, actress, producer, human rights activist, fashion designer… Jennifer Lopez has come a long way since she was plain old Jenny From The Block. With her ageless appearance and her endless energy, it’s hard to believe she turns 50 this month. ‘I don’t drink, smoke, or have caffeine. That really wrecks your skin as you get older,’ says the star, who celebrated curves way before Kim Kardashian West made them her thing.
She’s currently storming the US with her It’s My Party tour, released new music in April and will lead a strippers’ revenge in her highly anticipated film Hustlers this September. Then there’s her recent engagement to Alex Rodriguez. Jen is living her best life for sure!
Born in 1969 in New York’s the Bronx, Jennifer Lynn Lopez was raised, with her two sisters, by Puerto Rican parents, kindergarten teacher Guadalupe and computer specialist David Lopez.
Imbued with a passion for performing, dancing and singing lessons paid off with roles in musical theatre. ‘I grew up poor, so I knew I had to work hard,’ she has said.
In the early ’90s she was a backing dancer for Janet Jackson and danced on TV comedy In Living Color, before her acting career took off. Thanks to action thriller
Money Train, pop biopic Selena and 1998’s Out Of Sight, opposite ‘okay kisser’ George Clooney, she became the first Latin actress to earn over $1 million a film.
But Jennifer ‘missed the excitement of the stage’. Silencing critics who suggested her switch to pop was a ‘gimmick’, her debut single If You Had My Love
and album On The 6 – named after the subway train she used to ride – were instant hits.
Jennifer’s curves were in the spotlight too, and the plunging green Versace dress worn to the 2000 Grammy Awards remains an iconic look.
Recalling how her mother taught her to embrace her natural body shape, she said: ‘Being curvy or not being 6ft tall was never a bad thing; it was actually something that was celebrated.’ But that didn’t stop her struggling with her selfimage: ‘I remember thinking I was not thin enough because I had curves.’
By this time, Jennifer was already divorced from Cuban waiter Ojani Noa. A two-year romance with Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs ended when the couple got mixed up in a nightclub gunfight, and her marriage to backing dancer Cris Judd ended in divorce.
This was followed by a romance with actor Ben Affleck, who proposed in 2002. But despite Ben’s cameo in her Jenny From The Block video and their shared screen time in movies Jersey Girl and Gigli, ‘Bennifer’ split in 2004. She described it as her ‘first big heartbreak’ and later said: ‘For me, the relationship journey has been very up and down. But it didn’t have to do with anybody else but me – it was about me figuring out me.’
After the success of her third album This Is Me… Then,
she embarked on her third marriage, with long-time friend
Marc Anthony.
Careerwise, things were moving fast with clothing, beauty and perfume ranges, a Spanish album and an Amnesty International award.
In March 2008, Jennifer and Marc welcomed twins Emme and Max. ‘I didn’t have kids until later and I almost thought it wasn’t going to happen for me,’ she said.
Motherhood wasn’t going to slow Jennifer down, though, and six months later she completed a gruelling triathlon! In 2010, she was thrilled to become a judge on American Idol: ‘Finally people got to see that I was actually a person, someone with a heart. I got to speak for myself for the first time, and that changed everything.’
Sadly, she and Marc split after a decade. ‘The pain hurt so much,’ said a devastated Jennifer. ‘But I didn’t want what happened to finish me. I wanted to come out of it stronger than before.’
And she did. Not only did her career continue to flourish but, in 2017, after a three-year romance with dancer Casper Smart, Jennifer bumped into former baseball player Alex ‘A-rod’ Rodriguez, who she’d met a decade earlier. She was still in character for TV drama Shades Of Blue and recalled being ‘dressed like my character, like a boy. He looks at me. I say: “It’s Jennifer.” He says: “You look so beautiful.”’
The rest, as they say, is history. In March this year, the hot power couple announced their engagement. And with Alex’s daughters Ella and Natasha getting along famously with Emme and Max, they make for a picture-perfect blended family. ‘We love each other and we love our life together,’ Jennifer says. ‘The exciting part is that we’re both very aware of how lucky we are to have found each other.‘