I’m not sure if this is the best or worst question anyone ever asked a global megastar, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the best. “So have you ever freaked out and just said ‘holy sh–, I’m J.Lo! I’m massive!'”
Apparently Jennifer Lopez does, occasionally, wig out on that trip. “I have, at times. You know: ‘wow, this is overwhelming, people are watching me and things like that.’ There’s moments of that, but for the most part I feel like God put me in this position for a reason, because he felt like I could handle it.”
And handle it she certainly can. Twenty-six years after moving out of her parents’ modest home in the Bronx, New York, and taking a punt on a career as a dancer, she is worth nearly $342 million. She has still-strong film and music careers (she’s sold 75 million records), owns a production company, two mobile phone companies, a large property profolio and has clothing ranges and fragrances in her name.
At 44 Lopez looks impossibly good, has shed her reputation for being eternally half of a celebrity supercouple (adios: Puff Daddy, Ben Affleck and Marc Anthony) and emerged a sex symbol and a true diva: part of that closed club of pop royals populated by the likes of Beyonce and Madonna.
By at least one definition, she is even more than them; did any pop star so easily cross over from film to music She was the first star to have a No.1 album and film in the same week in the US: The Wedding Planner and J.Lo in January 2001.
Did any remain so busy in both careers Lopez’s new album, A.K.A., sits at No.8 in the US album charts, debuted in the top 25 in this country, and she has three movies planned for release next year. She will be on Australian television screens this month as a guest judge on The X-Factor Australia.
As ubiuquitous as Lopez is, one of her many contradictions is that as her movies and music have gone – how to put this delicately – in one direction, her fame has gone in the other.
The truth is her recent music and films have made little impact
