Yuku free message boards

J.Lo
Success Makes the Best Revenge
By Reno Rodroguez

Jennifer Lopez has heard it all before: That she's a spoiled little brat. That beneath that sultry, beautiful facade lies a demanding, temperamental diva. That she's prone to temper tantrums and hissy fits at the slightest provocation. That she's just plain difficult.

Curled up on a plush sofa in a Manhattan hotel suite on a rainy spring afternoon, the actress/singer/sex/symbol /entrepreneur admits it is disheartening to be dogged by that kind of reputation.

"It bothers me a little bit. That's probably the most disappointing aspect of my career for me. Not just disappointing, but sad, because I know I'll be able to dispel that reputation with the people I work with. Once they meet me, they'll see that I am a professional, that I am actually a nice person, that I'm going to do everything I can to make it as pleasant for them as I hope they will for me.

"But there are a lot of fans out there who will never get to meet you and might believe all this stuff, which is usually all lies. There could be a girl out there in Wichita who looks up to you and really loves your music or your movies, and then she reads something 'Jennifer Lopez wanted 500 candles in her dressing room or else she wouldn't show up to work!' and she's going to think 'God, is that what she's really like? That's terrible!"

But Lopez is resigned to the fact that mean-spirited gossip and innuendo are part of the price of celebrity, and she's not going to start whining about it and ask you to feel sorry for her.

"I have no right to complain," she says. "I love what I do, and I feel fortunate to be doing it. I've been lucky enough to have some success and I have nothing to hide. People are going to say what they want about you, but in the end, things like that don't mean anything. You just have to move on."
And Lopez has been moving on so much lately, it sometimes feels like she's everywhere at once. Currently in theaters is Enough, where Lopez plays an abused wife who goes on the run with her young daughter to escape the clutches of her monstrous husband (Billy Campbell). Due for release later this year is Gigli, a comedy-drama co-starring Lopez and Ben Affleck as rival contract killers. Currently filming now is Uptown Girl, in which Lopez dons a maid's uniform as a hotel housekeeper who falls in love with an up-and-coming politician (Ralph Fiennes).

It's a slate full enough to make any actress envious,but movies are only one part of Lopez's workload. There is also her career as a singer, which has threatened to overshadow her film work, due to the success of her debut album, On the 6, with its hit singles If You Had My Love and Waiting for Tonight, and last year's follow-up J.Lo, which sold two million copies in its first week of release and spawned a spin-off CD, J to Tha L-O.

Throw in modeling campaigns, a planned concert tour, a highly rated TV special, a burgeoning line of clothing and cosmetics and even a restaurant in L.A., and Lopez, who turns 32 in July, seems to be out to conquer the world.
But that hectic pace has not come without a price. During the filming of Enough, for example, Lopez's energy gave out.
"In the 11 or so movies I've made, I've never taken a day off, never missed a video shoot, never been late," she says. "But during the making of Enough, I hit the wall for the first time. I remember telling the director "I can't go on." I went to the doctor and said 'I'm tired. This movie is draining me." I was doing the movie, shooting music videos on the weekend, someone had come by my trailer that day to ask for a loan, and there was stuff in the paper about me being pregnant, and my mother and grandmother were very upset about it. There was all this stuff happening at the same time, and all of a sudden I couldn't take it anymore."

But there was no Mariah Carey-style meltdown for Lopez. Even her doctor had little sympathy. "I asked the doctor 'Can you write a note that says we have to stop?' I wanted to take a month off. And he said 'No, you just have to rest, that's all. Instead of five or six hours of sleep a night, you need to get seven or eight. You have to respect yourself that way."

Telling Lopez to slow down, however, is like telling an alcoholic not to have another beer. Ever since her first steady gig as one of the "fly girls" on TV's In Living Color, Lopez has felt compelled to stay busy, as if it were in her blood.

"I was watching Sexaholic the other night-Have you seen it? If you're Latin, it's hilarious! I loved it! Oh my God!and John Leguizamo was saying 'I bury myself in my work because that's what I do when my life is shit.' And that made me realize that maybe I need to examine stuff and start thinking about why I work like this. But this is just a very creative time for me. I have a lot of creative energy right now, and I happen to have people around me who are with me, so as long as I have the clarity to keep coming up with ideas, we're going to keep doing things."

Hollywood, for one, is happy Lopez isn't planning any extended vacations soon. It's telling that Columbia Pictures, the studio distributing Enough, chose to release the film on Memorial Day weekend: Lopez has become enough of a bankable star to hold her own against blockbusters like Star Wars: Episode 2:Attack of the Clones and Spider-Man.
And no matter what you may have read in the papers about her temperament, those who have worked with her have nothing but good things to say.

Michael Apted, who directed Enough, compares Lopez to the lofty likes of Sissy Spacek, Sigourney Weaver and Jodie Foster in that "she's very gifted, but she also works very hard. I have always liked people who aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and get on with it, and don't think they're God's gift to mankind. I had heard a lot of stories about her and was told that I would have a hard time, but I never experienced that.'"

Tarsem Singh, who directed Lopez in the psychedelic thriller The Cell, chuckles when you ask him to give up some dirt on his leading lady. "If those stories were true, I wouldn"t tell you anyway," he says. "But I will tell you this: Whenever I really needed Jennifer, she was always there for me. At one point, the studio was going to make me cut a desert scene in the film unless Jennifer agreed to travel to Africa to shoot it. I went to her and said "I need you to be available in Africa, and you may not get back in time for your holiday," and she was completely supportive. I"ll swallow any pill that comes with that kind of professionalism."

Actor Stephen Dorff, who co-starred opposite Lopez in 1996's Blood and Wine,long before she had become the force of nature known as J.Lo remembers her as being "very sweet. I've seen her occasionally since then, and she's always very nice. Obvious-ly, she's a very different woman now from when we were working together. Now she's a huge pop star and she's succeeding in all these different areas, which you have to respect. I think she knows what she's doing. She's a smart girl."

So where do these stories come from? Ask Lopez, and she throws her hands up, looking flummoxed. "It's funny, because you would think that would come from somewhere. And then you wonder where does it come from? What is it about me that makes people want to say that kind of stuff?"
Maybe it's plain old jealousy. Many female performers have tried to rule the film and music worlds: Madonna, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey. But Lopez was the first and thus far only woman to have both the number one album and movie in the United States in the same week, the way she did in January 2001, when The Wedding Planner and her CD J.Lo ruled the charts.

When you ask about envy, Lopez shrugs, then says, "On one of the first TV shows I ever did [Second Chances], a wonderful actor named Pepe Serna taught me something very important. He said 'Many people in this business are so competitive, and people are going to look at you and envy you. But whatever is meant for you is meant for you, and nobody can take it away from you. You create your own success.' It's such a true statement."

"But just for the record," she adds with a devilish smile, "I want to say that I don't have any animosity towards anybody. All I've got is love for all you all out there! Big shout-outs and all that kind of stuff. I'm just doing my thing."

Lopez began doing her thing dancing in musicals and choruses while still in high school. Born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, Lopez, the second oldest of three sisters, won a dance competition in 1991 to become one of the voluptuous dancers of In Living Color. A series of TV movies and failed series came next, followed by increasingly larger roles in feature films like Money Train, Selena (for which she became the first Hispanic actress to earn a $1 million paycheck), U-Turn, Out of Sight (which definitively proved Lopezhad the acting talent to back up her looks) and Angel Eyes.

Her musical career has followed the same seemingly effortless path, making Lopeza permanent fixture on MTV and pop radio. Her NBC special Jennifer Lopezin Concert last November brought her a corporate sponsorship offer to embark on her first national tour, which she plans to do next year. And her success in films has earned her a production deal with Sony Pictures, where she has several projects in development, including a new version of Carmen (being written by Craig Pearce of Moulin Rouge fame) for herself to star in, and a film based on the tragic life of Puerto Rican singer Hector LaVoe (known as "El Cantante de los Cantantes") to be played by Marc Anthony.

Through it all, Lopezhas remained strangely grounded. Although she lives in Los Angeles and keeps company with the Hollywood elite (she was one of the presenters at this year's Academy Awards), Lopezsays she remains a Bronx girl at heart, right down to her recognizably 'Noo Yawk' accent.

"I have a very American way of thinking, but I also feel very Puerto Rican. I'm both: I'm Nuyorican," she says. "That's the name of my production company, so that probably sums it up. People ask me all the time how do I stay connected, and I always tell them 'How could I not?' It's who I am, and it manifests itself in everything I do. It's something you can't leave behind. I'm Jennifer L�pez, and I am a Puerto Rican from the Bronx.

That strong connection to her roots is what made Lopez feel a bit uncomfortable two summers ago, when she was lumped into the Latin pop explosion along with Ricky Martin and Marc Anthony.

I understand why it happened, because the media likes to put a label on everything, so some journalists said "Look, there's three Latin performers!" and suddenly we were a wave. It's weird. From the Latin perspective, it's like "Did we just pop up like gremlins? You poured water and all of a sudden, here we were, singing and dancing?' It was a strange thing. And I didn't like the way they used 'crossing over', because it makes it sound like we just came over to this country. I was born here, Marc was born here and Ricky was born in Puerto Rico. It's a strange, silly word."
The only area where Lopez hasn't been wildly successful is her romantic life, which has played out across the pages of tabloid newspapers and gossip rags. But after her first marriage to model/waiter Ojani Noa, then her tumultuous relationship with rapper Sean 'Puffy' Combs, Lopez has decided to keep her private life private. When you ask her how things are going with Chris Judd, the dancer she married last September, she politely declines to say much. "I don't like to talk about Chris in public, because I've learned my lesson from past relationships. Everything is good."
So is her career, obviously. And as for those naysayers who would like nothing more than to see her stumble, Lopez isn't losing any sleep.

"Keenan Ivory Wayans taught me something very important years ago. He said, "Don't worry about the people who do you wrong. Success is the best revenge you can have on anybody." And you know what? He was right."