


He took out trade ads praising her professionalism as they filmed Gigli. “We just happened to be together at the birth of the tabloids, and it was like, ‘Oh my god.’ It was just a lot of pressure.” But the relationship was more public than usual from the start. “We didn’t try to have a public relationship,” she said recently. Her second marriage to dancer Cris Judd was on its last legs, and part of the initial fascination with Bennifer was the result of fans wondering whether she had cheated with Affleck while they worked together on Gigli. Lo,” she later said) - when she met Affleck. Lopez had just become J.Lo in 2001 - itself a fan-given moniker (“I'd go to MTV or wherever and there would be kids carrying signs that said J.
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1 the same week her movie The Wedding Planner opened at the top spot. She broke records in 2001, when her album J.Lo went to no. Diddy and created the green dress Grammy moment that we now only remember as being about her and not with him. The tabloids began to track her busy romantic life as she dated P. (Plus all of these movies were self-produced through her own company, Nuyorican Productions, that she started alongside Julia Roberts’ former agent Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas.) That quasi-autobiographical narrative of the working-class Latina made good also served as the foundation for the plots of some of her biggest hits, from the Latinx Cinderella remake, Maid in Manhattan, up to Hustlers. It was a relatable persona that powered bops like “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” and “I’m Real.” And she used that movie role to ride in on the so-called Latin crossover boom.įrom choosing the title of her first album, On the 6, and onward throughout her early career, Lopez always presented herself as the girl next door: a Nuyorican who rode the subway from the Bronx to Manhattan. She became a Hollywood megastar by playing a real-life Latina who never got her crossover moment: Selena. Lopez’s celebrity was always invitingly meta, mixing real life and show business. And that’s precisely why this crowd-pleasing tabloid romance - of old lovers reunited - feels oddly uncanny yet on brand. In the era between, say, Cher and Kim Kardashian, Lopez was the most consistent headline-grabbing, content-creating star.

But it’s also a reminder of why Lopez’s iconic green dress in 2000 took over the nascent internet to the point that it compelled Google to create the popular Google Images search function. The fascination with Bennifer’s social media rebirth is, on the one hand, part of the aughts nostalgia that had people yearning for an Aniston–Pitt reunion earlier this year. They both moved on and have enjoyed plenty of career - and relationship - highs and lows since. She and Affleck dated for less than two years after the video, breaking up after some movie flops and cheating rumors in 2004. Watching the “Jenny From the Block” video now, it’s striking how even back then Lopez managed to turn the celebrity gossip swirling around her into her own irresistible content. “I’m in control and loving it,” she sang, “rumors got me laughing, kid.” The scenes of her body being worshipped on her terms were, like the bop itself, a reclamation of her image at the time. In both the original music video and the new images, Lopez lies down in a bikini while Affleck lovingly pets and kisses her much-mythologized backside.
