So many film stars have attempted to
launch a career in film; so many hit musicians have sought further
success in the movies. Think Madonna, Bruce
Willis, David Bowie, Whitney
Houston, Keanu
Reeves, Mariah
Carey, the list goes on and on. Yet none of them have ever matched
the monumental parallel achievements of Jennifer Lopez. Three
multi-million-selling albums, and counting: several major blockbusters:
Hollywood pay packets breaking the $12 million mark, AND a Golden Globe
nomination. Then there's the clothing line, the cosmetics and
fragrances. The woman is truly an all-singing, all-dancing phenomenon.
She was born in the Castle Hill area of New York's Bronx on the 24th of
July, 1970, growing up on Blackrock Avenue. Her father, David, was a
computer technician, eventually working for Guardian Insurance. Mother
Guadalupe (nee Rodriguez) was a kindergarten teacher working up in
Westchester County. The couple both hailed from Ponce (though David's
maternal great-parents were European), the second largest city in Puerto
Rico, but had met in America, where they were both brought as children.
Jennifer and her two sisters, Leslie (now a housewife and opera singer)
and Lynda (a DJ, VJ and entertainment reporter), grew up in a small
apartment which was "cold in the winter, hot in the summer".
But "Hey", Jennifer later recalled "there was always rice
and beans". And there was music. To keep the kids off the streets,
Guadalupe would encourage them to put on little performances in the
front room, singing and dancing.
Salsa and merengue were favourites, with
West Side Story viewed on many occasions - being about their people in
their kind of neighbourhood. Jennifer claims to have seen the movie over
100 times. As a kid, she always admired Rita Moreno for her feistiness,
her hot dancing and her cool boyfriend, yet ambition told her she should
want to be Natalie Wood's Maria - the star.
This ambition was fed from an early age.
Jennifer began singing and dancing lessons from the age of 5 (at 7 her
school dance class would tour New York), continuing through 8 years at
the Catholic Holy Family high school in the Bronx, and another 4 at the
all-girl Preston High School. Here she also proved herself to be an
excellent athlete, pursuing softball, tennis, gymnastics and track
events. She wasn't ever much of a student, though. When later asked what
she got on her SATs, she joked "Nail polish".
Something of a tomboy, she grooved to R&B and the new electro and
hip-hop scenes and was reputedly not to be messed with. Physically a
slow developer, she claims not to have felt like "a hot babe"
till, at age 15, she started going out with David Cruz, "the
best-looking guy in the neighbourhood", a relationship that would
continue for some 9 years.
Two years before the Cruz experience, at 13, she gained her famous
profile when a truck carrying cylinders of compressed gas hit her
mother's car. One of the truck's headlights came through the windscreen
and crashed into the back of the car, where young Jennifer was sitting.
Luckily, she was bent down, tying her shoelace and received only a
broken nose, rather than a face fit only for a starring role in Mask.
At 16, Jennifer won her first film role, as Myra in Connie Kaiserman's
My Little Girl, where Mary Stuart Masterson played a rich woman who
volunteers to help institutionalized orphans in Philadelphia and must
overcome much opposition. But this didn't kick-start Jennifer's career,
it simply gave her a tantalising taste.
After graduating from High School, she entered a period of frenetic
activity. Enrolling at Baruch College in Manhattan, she also held down a
job in a law office and, at night, continued with her dance classes.
Unsurprisingly, her college career lasted just one semester. Guadalupe,
keen on her daughter continuing her education and doubting her chances
in showbiz, was incensed. So Jennifer moved out, for a while sleeping in
the building where she'd won a scholarship to study dance.
For a while, Guadalupe was proved absolutely correct. Even while still
in high school, Jennifer had performed in musicals and on chorus lines,
but nothing big. She was in local productions of Oklahoma and Jesus
Christ Superstar, there was a brief European tour with the Golden
Musicals of Broadway revue, but after a year and a half of auditioning,
there was no real hope of a breakthrough. When she failed an audition to
dance in the Wayans brothers' comedy show, In Living Color, she was on
the verge of breakdown.
Fortunately, her luck changed rapidly.
She won a place on a Japanese tour of choreographer Hinton Battle's
Synchronicity. On her return, she received a call from Hollywood, saying
she'd now been accepted for In Living Color, and could join the Flygirls,
the dance group whose routines opened and closed the show, choreographed
by Rosie Perez. Off she went to the west coast, but hated it, only
settling when Cruz moved out to join her. When their relationship ended,
in 1994, he would move back to the Bronx, opening a dry-cleaning
business.
In Living Color was, of course, a huge hit, launching the Wayans
brothers, as well as Jim
Carrey, Jamie
Foxx and Chris
Rock. Working under Perez, Jennifer gained valuable experience, but
was keen to proceed with an acting career. It was Keenan Ivory Wayans
who persuaded her to stick with the show for two years, to gain both
further knowledge and financial security.
Eventually, she did leave, continuing to dance in several music videos,
most notably Janet Jackson's That's The Way Loves Goes. But, offered
Jackson's world tour, she turned it down, resolute in her thespian
ambition and moving into more TV work. First came the movie The Crash Of
Flight 7, starring Lindsay Wagner and Robert Loggia, where one of three
planes on their way to a remote medical outpost crashes in the Mexican
jungle. Immediately the search is on to locate and rescue any survivors,
Jennifer playing heroic nurse Rosie Romero.
After this came three series in quick succession. First was Second
Chances, created by husband and wife Lynn Marie Latham and Bernard
Lechowick, part of the Knots Landing team. Here three women, each
finding her life in turmoil, are drawn together as a "second
chance" comes their way. Then came the infinitely more streetwise
South Central, Jennifer having been recommended to the producer by his
wife, one of her co-dancers in the Flygirls.
This concerned the Mosley family and in
particular mother Joan, as she tried to keep her son Andre (Larenz Tate
- Menace II Society, Dead Presidents) on the straight and narrow amidst
the drugs, guns and bloody money of one of LA's roughest districts.
Jennifer would appear in a recurring role, as a cashier in a local
business.
In terms of continuity, Second Chances had been a disaster. Not only
were the sets destroyed in an earthquake, but two of the stars fell
pregnant. The producers decided it wasn't worth rebuilding, or writing
in some weird Dallas-style plot about a plague of alien impregnations,
so they moved on. However, they had been impressed by the public
response to Jennifer and her screen father, and brought their characters
back in their next project, Hotel Malibu (very rare, that).
Here Joanna Cassidy played a tough cookie
who runs the family hotel after her husband pegs it, her sly son all the
while trying to sell the business so he can pay off corrupt government
officials. Jennifer returned as Melinda Lopez, now the new bar assistant
in the hotel.
Now, at last, she was on the rise. In
Gregory Nava's My Family, she inhabited the 1930s as the director
followed three generations of an immigrant Mexican family in Los
Angeles, Jennifer winning an Independent Spirit nomination for her
efforts. Then came the first blockbuster, when she came in between Woody
Harrelson and Wesley
Snipes, just as her former dance-leader Rosie Perez had in White Men
Can't Jump. In Money Train, Harrelson and Snipes are transit cops who
decide to rob the train carrying all the day's taking on the New York
subway system. Naturally, they fall out over new partner Grace Santiago
(Jennifer), an all-action kinda gal who punches Wesley out in the ring.
Money Train wasn't great, but it was high-profile, with a public uproar
over several copycat arson assaults on the transit system. Senator Bob
Dole even demanded a boycott of the film. Jennifer was now getting hot,
managing to beat both Ashley
Judd and Lauren Holly to the role of Miss Marquez in Francis Ford
Coppola's Jack. Here Robin
Williams played a kid with an extreme ageing disorder that has him
looking 40 at the age of 10. With a severe crush on teacher Jennifer, he
woos her with Gummi Bears and invites her to the school dance, while she
has to gently let him down.
Like Money Train, Jack was not a big success, but Jennifer was getting
into the habit of surviving such situations unscathed. She moved on to
Blood And Wine, where Jack Nicholson played a wine dealer in a failing
marriage to Judy Davis. Looking for a big score, he steals a diamond
necklace from some rich folks and begins an affair with their sultry
Cuban nanny (Jennifer).
Meanwhile, life is further complicated by
Jack's step-son (Stephen Dorff) who hates Jack and wants everything he's
got, including his new mistress. Directed by Bob Rafaelson, the movie
was intended to complete a trilogy including Five Easy Pieces and The
King Of Marvin Gardens. As you'd expect, it was a critical hit, but no
money-spinner.
Jennifer, meanwhile, had other matters on her mind. During the shoot,
she'd met Ojani Noa, a Cuban immigrant and aspiring model, then waiting
tables at Gloria Estefan's Larios On The Beach restaurant in Miami. The
pair would enter a whirlwind romance.
Now came Jennifer's first starring role. Since My Family, Gregory Navas
had been putting together a bio-pic of Selena Quintanilla, a Latina
singer from Texas who'd become a crossover pop star. Topping the Spanish
charts and winning a Grammy, she was about to begin a promotional tour
for her first album in English when, in 1995 and at the age of 23, she
was shot dead by the president of her own fan club.
Despite her performance in My Family,
Jennifer still had to audition - her toughest test yet. Yet she won
through and delivered a superb performance, glammed up in sequins and
spandex and singing before stadium crowds of tens of thousands. She'd
thoroughly deserve her Golden Globe nomination.
At the wrap-party for Selena, Ojani Noa
would grab the microphone and, in the middle of the dancefloor, offer
her a huge diamond ring and his hand in marriage. She accepted both.
They'd marry in February, 1997. And there was something else Jennifer
gained from the Selena experience. Performing those numbers, and
strutting her stuff on those big stages, had taken her back to her time
in musicals, and she was now very hungry for more.
She'd had mild interest from record
companies before, but now her heightened profile caused a bidding war
that ended in victory for the WORK Group label, part of Sony, run by Mr
Mariah Carey, Tommy Mottola. Big plans would now be set in place.
On the movie front, it just kept getting better. In Anaconda, she was
Terri Flores, director of a film crew travelling up the Amazon to make a
documentary on a lost tribe, her cinematographer being played by Ice
Cube, one of the few pop stars to enter the film business with any
degree of decorum.
Unfortunately, the crew are taken hostage
by Jon Voight, a nutty hunter who forces them to help him catch a
massive, man-eating snake. Once found, the snake does not go hungry and
Jennifer, soaked in river-water, sent male pulses racing worldwide. The
movie would shoot to Number One, coincidentally replacing Liar Liar, the
latest hit from Jennifer's In Living Color buddy Jim
Carrey.
On she went to Oliver Stone's noir thriller U-Turn. Here drifter Sean
Penn, on the run from bookies who've already taken two of his
fingers, has his car break down in a small, weird town where he's hired
by grizzled Nick Nolte to off his wife. She turns out to be Jennifer, an
irresistible femme fatale who also hires Penn to whack Nolte. And so the
movie builds to a messy conclusion, with Jennifer engaging in such
beastly business as shoving Penn off a cliff and smacking Nolte with a
tomahawk - a great role played with much gusto.
She'd risen fast, and now came the real breakthrough. In Steven
Soderbergh's Out Of Sight, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, she went
noir once more. With the movie slipping back and forth through time, George
Clooney played a robber who, while in jail, plans a serious diamond
heist. Breaking out, he's forced to kidnap US Marshal Jennifer. Once
free, she should try to arrest him but, hey, he's kinda cute and she
begins to have second thoughts. Since he's relentless in his pursuit of
ill-gotten gains, and not the best of robbers to boot, complex problems
arise.
The film was sharp, violent, funny and subtle and an unexpectedly big
hit. Clooney and Lopez were suddenly taken seriously, both of them
becoming sex symbols, too. Entertainment Weekly claimed that
"watching her is like seeing molten rock churn under
pressure". Gossip about the dimensions of Jennifer's posterior,
which had begun due to the figure-hugging spandex of Selena, now filled
tabloids and bar-rooms everywhere. To much male chagrin, the posterior
would not be visible in her next venture, when she provided the voice of
Azteca in the animated Antz. From Flygirl to ant - a bizarre
progression.
Jennifer's profile was now ludicrously
high. Out Of Sight had made her cool, she made a big entrance at the
Oscars ceremony, and she scored a modeling contract with L'Oreal. On the
music front, too, Sony had begun the big push, Lopez appearing in Puff
Daddy's Been Around The World video, and duetting with Latin star Marc
Anthony on his Te Conosco Bien.
Now she was ready, 1999 seeing the release of her debut album, On The 6,
its title recalling the train she used to take to auditions and classes
in Manhattan. All the stops were pulled out, all favours pulled in. Big
time producers were employed - Puff Daddy, Emilio Estefan, Rodney
Jerkins and Rick Wake - the mix intended to perfect her hybrid of
hip-hop, Latin and pop. Marc Anthony made an appearance, duetting on No
Me Ames, as did rappers Fat Joe and Big Punisher. The crossover was
brilliantly executed. The first single, If You Had My Love, went to
Number One. No Me Ames was a Latin chart-topper.
It was claimed that Jennifer merely formed part of a wider Latin craze,
along with Ricky
Martin, Marc Anthony and Enrique
Iglesias, but this wasn't really the case. Thanks to Puff Daddy and
Jerkins, much of her music had a deliberate black edge while Wake,
producer of Celine
Dion, lent big ballad power.
Add to this Jennifer's pneumatic video
appearances, when she came on like a hi-octane Janet Jackson rather than
some mambo queen. She was trying to appeal to a crossover audience, and
multi-million sales showed she'd succeeded. More would come with 2001's
J.Lo album, and 2002's This Is Me... Then.
In the meantime, she'd become a bone fide film star. With The Cell, she
became the first Latina actress to headline a major Hollywood movie
since Rita Hayworth (real name Margarita Carmen Cansino). In the movie,
she played an experimental psychologist who's discovered a way to
literally enter the minds of her patients. So, when a serial killer is
in a comatose state and the cops want to locate and save his final
victim, Jen's asked to pop into his evil head and discover what he
knows. Of course, it's horrid in there, a cornucopia of gothic
beastliness, and FBI agent Benjamin Bratt has to go in to help.
The Cell featured some excellent VR
effects, and was another big hit for Jennifer. Career-wise it was all
going swimmingly, particularly after she appeared at the 2000 Grammies
wearing what looked like a green Versace handkerchief. Unfortunately, by
now her personal life had gone to hell. Having divorced Ojani Noa after
just a year, she'd begun seeing Puff Daddy, rap star and head of the Bad
Boy business empire.
It was a good match - he needed glamour
to show he'd made it, she needed to show she hadn't departed too far
from the streets. But it quickly turned bad. At the end of 1999, during
a brawl in a New York nightclub, shots were fired. Puffy and Jennifer
fled but, pulled over by the police, were found to have a gun in the
car. Both were taken down-town.
Jennifer would be released without charge, but Puffy's case would go on
for over a year. Rumours flew - Puffy's driver claimed Puffy had tried
to bribe him into taking responsibility for the gun. After the killing
of Tupac Shakur and Notorious
BIG, it looked like the authorities would make an example of Puffy
to stamp down on rap-related crime. Yet, though charged with bribery and
gun possession, Puffy walked free. It was Shyne, one of his young
proteges, who took the rap (ho ho), going down for ten years.
Throughout this fiasco, it was constantly being said that the ambitious
Lopez, fearing that her reputation might be damaged, would leave Puffy
in the lurch. She didn't, but they did split soon after his acquittal,
Jennifer rebounding into the arms of Cris Judd, a dancer she'd met while
filming her Love Don't Cost A Thing video. They married near-instantly,
in September 2001, but, as is so often the case, separated just a few
months later.
The pressure on her at the beginning of 2001 must have been
unbelievable. As Puffy's trial came to a head, she achieved an
unheard-of level of success. In January, she topped the charts with her
J. Lo album, and with her new movie The Wedding Planner, a feat
unmatched by any other actress.
With her movie fees now up to $9 million
per movie, she'd also launch Sweetface fashions, selling clothes for the
fuller-figured woman (due to her success, butt-implants were now at an
all-time high), as well as cosmetics lines and her Glow by J. Lo
fragrance. Incredible stuff.
The Wedding Planner took her away from noir thrillers and into rom-com.
Here Matthew McConaughey saves Jennifer from being run over by a truck
and falls for her. As it turns out, she's the one his fiancee, Bridgette
Wilson (Mrs Pete Sampras) has hired to plan their wedding. Complications
naturally ensue. This was followed by another romance, this time
disguising itself as a supernatural thriller.
In Angel Eyes, Lopez played an aggressive
cop, angry and self-doubting after an abusive childhood. Once again her
life is saved, this time by Jim Caviezel, a guy who's just lost his wife
and child and now believes himself to be Jennifer's guardian angel. You
can guess the rest.
2002 brought yet more success. First came
Michael Apted's Enough where Jennifer, a waitress, falls for handsome
Billy Campbell, gets married, buys a house, has a kid, and then runs
when Campbell begins to beat her. But he keeps finding her, so she
trains herself up to beat him back. After this came Maid In Manhattan
where, as a hotel maid, she sneakily tries on some rich guest's dress
and is spotted by senatorial candidate Ralph Fiennes, who mistakes her
for a stunning socialite and falls head over heels.
That year was a big one, too. She bought a $9 million property in Miami
Beach, her neighbours being Robin and Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees. She
opened Madre's restaurant in Pasadena, to be run by her first husband,
Ojani Noa. And she found love once more, getting engaged to actor Ben
Affleck, receiving a $3.5 million ring into the bargain.
She'd met Affleck on the set of the movie, Gigli. Here he played a dopey
thug sent to kidnap the DA's retarded brother from an institution, so as
to aid the cause of a mob boss currently on trial. Jennifer was Ricki, a
hardcore assassin sent along to make sure he gets the job done right. Of
course, he likes her, and it gets messy. The couple would appear
together in their next project, too.
This was Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl, a
drama-comedy where Affleck takes up with Jennifer and her 6-year-old
daughter, both of the ladies being smart, down-to-earth, big fans of the
musical Sweeney Todd and experts in manipulation.
Beyond this, Jennifer had formed her own production company, Nuyorican,
the name reflecting her upbringing - half New York, half Puerto Rico. A
deal was struck with Sony, with various projects on the cards. A film
version of Carmen, maybe, to be written by Craig "Moulin
Rouge" Pearce. And perhaps a TV series based on Jennifer's early
life in the Bronx.
From those humble roots, Jennifer Lopez had become the biggest
multi-media star in the world, and showed no sign of stopping. Having
made such an auspicious start to the millennium, she stands every chance
of being the biggest star of the 2000s. ~ Dominic Wills
