From Here To Divanity
With role models like Babs, Bette, and Cher, does divalicious JENNIFER LOPEZ aspire to be the new Miss Thang?
Some divas wear slinky cat suits. Other divas prefer to put on turbans and boas. But before her interview, Jennifer Lopez decides that the most diva-ish thing to do is simply not to get dressed. As she emerges from the bedroom in a midtown Manhattan hotel, her bare feet scrunch across the carpeting. A large diamond cross gleams at her throat. Alas, she isn't nude. In fact, her legendarily voluptuous posterior -- which is fast becoming an erotic totem up there with Uma Thurman's lips and Pamela Anderson Lee's bust -- is eclipsed by white terry cloth.
But while choosing to wear a hotel bathrobe for an interview isn't subtle -- are they holding auditions for a White Diamonds ad? -- it's no less than the daring that one expects from a woman who once dissed half the young actresses in Hollywood. And the gambit has its effect. It isn't until the next day that a stammering reporter finds the courage to ask just what she was wearing under her robe. ''Nothing,'' admits Lopez, staring down her strong, hard nose with big, unabashed eyes. ''That's why I kept adjusting my robe -- so you wouldn't be mortified.''
Truth be told, the only thing that would be mortifying on Lopez's body is burlap. Armed with an aggressive sexiness, not to mention a potent combination of what every diva worth her Versaces must possess -- talent, fearlessness, and lip -- Lopez, 28, has, in the last two years, rocketed from up-and-coming actress to Hollywood's super-diva of 1998. It's a description she doesn't relish. ''I have a problem with the term,'' she says. ''I feel like it means that you are mean to people, that you look down on people, and I'm not that type of person.''
But make no mistake, Lopez is filling out the title fully, with equal measures of success and controversy. On the career front, she's broken through as the highest-paid Hispanic actress ever, pulling down $2 million for last summer's Out of Sight. Says director Gregory Nava, who gave Lopez (whose parents are Puerto Rican) her biggest break in 1997's Selena, ''A big Latina star is just a great point of pride for the whole community.''
This year, she also lent her voice to her first animated film, Antz (opening Oct. 2), as Azteca, a comely worker ant, who, quite unlike Lopez, is unquestioningly happy with her lowly place on the bottom rungs of the colony. But Lopez was perfect for the part, says the film's codirector Eric Darnell, because ''She's got this great combination of control and invulnerability -- she came from the Bronx and had to hold her own there -- and also a certain sort of sensualness that's hard to come by.''
And in early 1999, if everything goes according to plan, Lopez hopes to enter the true province of divadom: Whitneyland. That's when Sony Music -- the force behind Mariah Carey and Celine Dion -- plans to unleash Lopez's debut album, a mix of ballads and dance tunes, that the company hopes will be the biggest Latin crossover sensation since Gloria Estefan. ''It was a no-brainer,'' says Jeff Ayeroff, copresident of Sony's Work Group, who decided he wanted to sign Lopez at their first meeting. ''I was like, 'I'm a fish. You're a hook.'''
Factor in that Lopez got her start in the biz in 1991 as a Fly Girl on In Living Color--you can also spot her shaking her booty in the video for Janet Jackson's "That's the Way Love Goes"--and the portrait of an acting-singing-dancing triple threat begins to take shape. "I want everything. I want family. I want to do good work. I want love. I want to be comfortable," she says. "I think of people like Cher and Bette Midler and Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand. That's always been the kind of career I'd hoped to have. I want it all."
Be careful what you wish for. By many accounts in Hollywood, a graceful transition into full-fledged stardom hasn't been easy for Lopez. Nor for a number of people in her path, who, without much prodding, let fly a slew of adjectives about her. Not a soul describes her as mean, but how about difficult? Self-absorbed? And, oh, why not throw in capricious, too? "Yeah, I'm sure they didn't put it that nicely, either," says Lopez, clearly aware of the sniping that's out there.
Lopez must also know that she's partly responsible for her hell-on-wheels reputation. In a now notorious interview with Movieline magazine last February, Lopez sounded off ungenerously about everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow, implying she got ahead by dating Brad Pitt, to Wesley Snipes, whose advances she says she rebuffed while shooting Money Train.
Lopez's relationship with the media hasn't improved much since. According to a Universal executive who worked on marketing for Out of Sight, making sure the actress showed up to promote the film was a full-time job. In one instance, the morning after the movie's New York premiere, Lopez missed a live booking on the Today show by showing up almost an hour late. A Newsweek story never happened after she postponed the interview three times. "People would call up screaming at us, 'Where the hell is she?'" says the exec. "Practically every show she did was like that. Everything had to get down to the wire."
The uncomfortable glare on her private life has also left her smarting. Since her split earlier this year from Ojani Noa (the pair married in 1997, after meeting in a Miami restaurant where Noa was a waiter), persistent gossip items have linked her with rap mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs. "That is so dead and tired. We're just friends," she says, adding that she doesn't have a boyfriend right now. Nor does she have a publicist, since parting ways with her last one, Karynne Tencer, over the summer. One big Hollywood public-relations agency recently declined to take her on as a client because, according to one employee, "People think she's hard to handle. Life is too short."
The net effect of these tribulations is that the diva who once roared now keeps her mouth shut as much as possible. "I absolutely watch what I say more," she says. "I make my point, and I don't say much else." And if at one point her face seems to reveal that she's hurting from this year of growing pains, she's not going to open up about that either. "It's not upsetting," she says, sounding more annoyed than angry. "Who cares? I don't. I'm just being who I am. I don't try to be nice. I don't try to be not nice. I'm not trying to show you I'm a nice person either."
So what does Lopez reveal? Watching her is sort of like seeing molten rock churn under pressure. It's a fascinatingly torturous process. And it could yet produce a diamond. "It's impossible for people to imagine how overwhelming stardom can be," says Nava. "Everybody that this happens to has a period where they have to learn how to deal with it. Jennifer's very level-headed, and she's going to come through all of that with bells on." Adds Out of Sight director Steven Soderbergh, "I'd work with her again in a heartbeat."
And here's some undeniable proof that Lopez's place in the Hollywood pantheon is holding firm. Two weeks ago, Lopez--or at least her image--appeared on Will Smith's 30th birthday cake, right alongside depictions of Salma Hayek and Scary Spice. So what did the cake say? Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, had the baker write: "Now you can have a piece."
On the day following her interview, Lopez is sitting on a stool wearing a bronze satin bra and pair of almost see-through black pants. A woman is stooped at her feet painting her toenails, while makeup wizard Kevyn Aucoin applies false eyelashes to her lids, readying her for a photo shoot. It's another entertaining, and utterly innocuous, diva moment. And Lopez is laughing because her music producer is worried about the diminishing size of her butt. A real concern, perhaps, since it's famous enough to have been the subject of a shout-out on a recent Hollywood Squares. "It's funny. Now people want me to be a little heavier. I don't mind," she says. "All the other big-butted women in the world are happy."
As tracks from her work-in-progress album play in the background--they sound fun and danceable and formidably commercial--Lopez sings along. Her voice--caressing the lyrics of one song, "Could This Be Love?"--is both sweet and strong. Does making a run at becoming a singer scare her? She laughs again. "How can I live my life in fear like that?" she says. "The winners take risks. That's the only way to be."
Before long, Lopez is even comfortable enough to play at being a diva, in the way that a cat toys with a mouse. After she yells across the studio to her assistant to skip to track No. 11, this reporter asks her which song that is. "The song that I wanted to hear," she cracks. Her life, she admits, is "at an all-time high of tornado-whirlwind-storm right now." So it's no surprise that later, when she's asked if she'll make some more time for the interview, she says: "I'll try. But I don't make promises. Maybe that's the diva in me."
With role models like Babs, Bette, and Cher, does divalicious JENNIFER LOPEZ aspire to be the new Miss Thang?
Some divas wear slinky cat suits. Other divas prefer to put on turbans and boas. But before her interview, Jennifer Lopez decides that the most diva-ish thing to do is simply not to get dressed. As she emerges from the bedroom in a midtown Manhattan hotel, her bare feet scrunch across the carpeting. A large diamond cross gleams at her throat. Alas, she isn't nude. In fact, her legendarily voluptuous posterior -- which is fast becoming an erotic totem up there with Uma Thurman's lips and Pamela Anderson Lee's bust -- is eclipsed by white terry cloth.
But while choosing to wear a hotel bathrobe for an interview isn't subtle -- are they holding auditions for a White Diamonds ad? -- it's no less than the daring that one expects from a woman who once dissed half the young actresses in Hollywood. And the gambit has its effect. It isn't until the next day that a stammering reporter finds the courage to ask just what she was wearing under her robe. ''Nothing,'' admits Lopez, staring down her strong, hard nose with big, unabashed eyes. ''That's why I kept adjusting my robe -- so you wouldn't be mortified.''
Truth be told, the only thing that would be mortifying on Lopez's body is burlap. Armed with an aggressive sexiness, not to mention a potent combination of what every diva worth her Versaces must possess -- talent, fearlessness, and lip -- Lopez, 28, has, in the last two years, rocketed from up-and-coming actress to Hollywood's super-diva of 1998. It's a description she doesn't relish. ''I have a problem with the term,'' she says. ''I feel like it means that you are mean to people, that you look down on people, and I'm not that type of person.''
But make no mistake, Lopez is filling out the title fully, with equal measures of success and controversy. On the career front, she's broken through as the highest-paid Hispanic actress ever, pulling down $2 million for last summer's Out of Sight. Says director Gregory Nava, who gave Lopez (whose parents are Puerto Rican) her biggest break in 1997's Selena, ''A big Latina star is just a great point of pride for the whole community.''
This year, she also lent her voice to her first animated film, Antz (opening Oct. 2), as Azteca, a comely worker ant, who, quite unlike Lopez, is unquestioningly happy with her lowly place on the bottom rungs of the colony. But Lopez was perfect for the part, says the film's codirector Eric Darnell, because ''She's got this great combination of control and invulnerability -- she came from the Bronx and had to hold her own there -- and also a certain sort of sensualness that's hard to come by.''
And in early 1999, if everything goes according to plan, Lopez hopes to enter the true province of divadom: Whitneyland. That's when Sony Music -- the force behind Mariah Carey and Celine Dion -- plans to unleash Lopez's debut album, a mix of ballads and dance tunes, that the company hopes will be the biggest Latin crossover sensation since Gloria Estefan. ''It was a no-brainer,'' says Jeff Ayeroff, copresident of Sony's Work Group, who decided he wanted to sign Lopez at their first meeting. ''I was like, 'I'm a fish. You're a hook.'''
Factor in that Lopez got her start in the biz in 1991 as a Fly Girl on In Living Color--you can also spot her shaking her booty in the video for Janet Jackson's "That's the Way Love Goes"--and the portrait of an acting-singing-dancing triple threat begins to take shape. "I want everything. I want family. I want to do good work. I want love. I want to be comfortable," she says. "I think of people like Cher and Bette Midler and Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand. That's always been the kind of career I'd hoped to have. I want it all."
Be careful what you wish for. By many accounts in Hollywood, a graceful transition into full-fledged stardom hasn't been easy for Lopez. Nor for a number of people in her path, who, without much prodding, let fly a slew of adjectives about her. Not a soul describes her as mean, but how about difficult? Self-absorbed? And, oh, why not throw in capricious, too? "Yeah, I'm sure they didn't put it that nicely, either," says Lopez, clearly aware of the sniping that's out there.
Lopez must also know that she's partly responsible for her hell-on-wheels reputation. In a now notorious interview with Movieline magazine last February, Lopez sounded off ungenerously about everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow, implying she got ahead by dating Brad Pitt, to Wesley Snipes, whose advances she says she rebuffed while shooting Money Train.
Lopez's relationship with the media hasn't improved much since. According to a Universal executive who worked on marketing for Out of Sight, making sure the actress showed up to promote the film was a full-time job. In one instance, the morning after the movie's New York premiere, Lopez missed a live booking on the Today show by showing up almost an hour late. A Newsweek story never happened after she postponed the interview three times. "People would call up screaming at us, 'Where the hell is she?'" says the exec. "Practically every show she did was like that. Everything had to get down to the wire."
The uncomfortable glare on her private life has also left her smarting. Since her split earlier this year from Ojani Noa (the pair married in 1997, after meeting in a Miami restaurant where Noa was a waiter), persistent gossip items have linked her with rap mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs. "That is so dead and tired. We're just friends," she says, adding that she doesn't have a boyfriend right now. Nor does she have a publicist, since parting ways with her last one, Karynne Tencer, over the summer. One big Hollywood public-relations agency recently declined to take her on as a client because, according to one employee, "People think she's hard to handle. Life is too short."
The net effect of these tribulations is that the diva who once roared now keeps her mouth shut as much as possible. "I absolutely watch what I say more," she says. "I make my point, and I don't say much else." And if at one point her face seems to reveal that she's hurting from this year of growing pains, she's not going to open up about that either. "It's not upsetting," she says, sounding more annoyed than angry. "Who cares? I don't. I'm just being who I am. I don't try to be nice. I don't try to be not nice. I'm not trying to show you I'm a nice person either."
So what does Lopez reveal? Watching her is sort of like seeing molten rock churn under pressure. It's a fascinatingly torturous process. And it could yet produce a diamond. "It's impossible for people to imagine how overwhelming stardom can be," says Nava. "Everybody that this happens to has a period where they have to learn how to deal with it. Jennifer's very level-headed, and she's going to come through all of that with bells on." Adds Out of Sight director Steven Soderbergh, "I'd work with her again in a heartbeat."
And here's some undeniable proof that Lopez's place in the Hollywood pantheon is holding firm. Two weeks ago, Lopez--or at least her image--appeared on Will Smith's 30th birthday cake, right alongside depictions of Salma Hayek and Scary Spice. So what did the cake say? Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, had the baker write: "Now you can have a piece."
On the day following her interview, Lopez is sitting on a stool wearing a bronze satin bra and pair of almost see-through black pants. A woman is stooped at her feet painting her toenails, while makeup wizard Kevyn Aucoin applies false eyelashes to her lids, readying her for a photo shoot. It's another entertaining, and utterly innocuous, diva moment. And Lopez is laughing because her music producer is worried about the diminishing size of her butt. A real concern, perhaps, since it's famous enough to have been the subject of a shout-out on a recent Hollywood Squares. "It's funny. Now people want me to be a little heavier. I don't mind," she says. "All the other big-butted women in the world are happy."
As tracks from her work-in-progress album play in the background--they sound fun and danceable and formidably commercial--Lopez sings along. Her voice--caressing the lyrics of one song, "Could This Be Love?"--is both sweet and strong. Does making a run at becoming a singer scare her? She laughs again. "How can I live my life in fear like that?" she says. "The winners take risks. That's the only way to be."
Before long, Lopez is even comfortable enough to play at being a diva, in the way that a cat toys with a mouse. After she yells across the studio to her assistant to skip to track No. 11, this reporter asks her which song that is. "The song that I wanted to hear," she cracks. Her life, she admits, is "at an all-time high of tornado-whirlwind-storm right now." So it's no surprise that later, when she's asked if she'll make some more time for the interview, she says: "I'll try. But I don't make promises. Maybe that's the diva in me."
