A successful actress, singer, owner of her own brand, happy mother and beloved woman. It seems that Jennifer Lopez has achieved everything you can dream of. Meeting with a woman of amazing fortitude.
Today she is the main guest of the popular ABC TV show. She made an appointment to meet me… in the parking lot of his Los Angeles studio. I don’t know how she managed to accurately time when after the show she will appear in this parking lot. But the fact is: minute by minute, at 15.00 the door of the shooting pavilion opens and four bodyguards come out. And behind them is her: a white sweater, a black skirt, high heels 12 … no, all 15 cm. Slim waist, elegant curve of the hip, perfect legs. Man-proportion, I would say. She is punctual and perfect… But ideality is deceptive. “Listen, dear. Excuse me. Everything is so spun here … ”- she speaks quickly, and I quickly understand that the interview is breaking down. And then she unexpectedly adds: “In general, I’m waiting for you at home in the evening. At eight». “But I don’t know where to go!” “Go down Freeway 101 and take the 30th exit. It’s simple!»
I think Jennifer Lopez gave me a chance to get into the secret of her success: you need to turn on the engine, choose a direction and just move. And you will arrive at the goal if you do not change your direction …
By 8 p.m. I find myself in her area west of Los Angeles — fashionable, closed, marked by landscaping. The porter was warned of my arrival, and now I’m on my way to the white brick mansion. The interior is Lopez embodied: modern luxury, pretending to be ascetic. Dark floors, gray curtains, pastel colored furniture. Her assistant Jilly meets me, takes me to the office and says that Jennifer will be in 5 minutes.
In the office, everything is also the embodiment of Lopez — masculine will and femininity at the same time: wooden panels on the walls and armchairs with curved backs, fur casually thrown on the sofa, and a musical spaceship power plant. And bookcases, the contents of which reveal the artistic tastes of the owner: unconditional classics (“The Grapes of Wrath” by Steinbeck and albums of the Renaissance masters), truthful memoirs (Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer) and presumptuous “textbooks of life” (“Lies at the Altar: The Truth about Great Marriages «).
I take just a few steps in search of a toilet and … unexpectedly find myself in the kitchen, where the hostess of the house is talking to her lover, Casper Smart. I’m lost, and she: «Oh, I’m sorry!» — as if it was not me who interfered, but she made some tactlessness … It’s just amazing. Films with Jennifer Lopez have collected almost $ 2 billion at the global box office. Her albums are sold in the millions. She is a superstar and even a trademark — J.Lo ™. She lives behind a high fence, behind a shock-absorbing fence made of agents. So how does she manage to stay alive with all this? A person who is embarrassed and apologetic…
Psychologies: Have you ever felt trapped by your own fame?
Jennifer Lopez: Well no. I perceive my fame not as a desired goal, to which I finally came, but as something accompanying.
Accompanying what?
J.L.: For what I really want. I will explain the difference. It’s just that the point for me is not to be a singer or actress, but to be as good a singer or actress as I can be. Reach the limit of yourself, your abilities, use them 100%, express yourself fully. The meaning for me is in this personal… how should I say… fulfillment, or something. And the rest — fame, big money — it’s all a fun by-product. The most important thing is to express what only I can express.
Have you always lived with this belief?
J.L.: My parents thought I was crazy when I dropped out of college and told them that I was going to sing and dance professionally. They said, “Jenny, this is just stupid. None of the Latinos succeeded!” And it was true: not a single Latino had really big success in show business then. But this logic — “impossible, because it was not like this before” — I simply did not understand. And I did not pay attention at all to the fact that I was entering the zone of the greatest competition.
Why?
J.L.: If I compete with someone, then only with myself — for the best myself … Then I left my parents, mortally quarreling with them.
Already at the zenith of your popularity, you released the song Jenny from the Block, where you claimed that you are still the same «Jenny from the Block» that you were 20 years ago. And then they didn’t really believe you …
J.L.: Logically, no one with millions of dollars can claim that he has saved himself. Damn it, who is happier with a million dollar fortune?! The greatest happiness is just not to let external circumstances change you beyond recognition. And I just recognize myself. The one from the Bronx, from the Puerto Rican neighborhood. I recognize in myself all the best and worst traits that the Bronx laid in me.
- I want to get everything at once
For example, which ones?
J.L.: Well, I’m actually a little offhand. I have some familiarity. I am straight. I respect social success — but this is still a complex, a person cannot be judged by the degree of his success. I like to know a lot about people — this is also from the Bronx, in our quarter everyone knew everything about everyone: who is with whom, who is from whom, who is with whom. I retained the habit of unconsciously collecting information about people. Especially of a personal nature. Shame, but true! But I never interfere in anyone’s affairs — again the Bronx, they lived crowded there, and according to the rules of the ghetto — huddled together, so a certain distance in relations was a necessary thing.
But has anything changed since then?
“THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE, BECAUSE NO ONE HAS BEFORE DOING THIS BEFORE” — I DO NOT UNDERSTAND SUCH LOGIC!”
J.L. Yes, and I myself noted that something important has changed. One girl, she has been working with me for three years, told me about her lover. That they have been together for a long time and she would already like a more stable relationship, and he lives in his parents’ house — it is more convenient for him — and nothing portends a life together. She asked me for advice on what to do. And I — I didn’t expect from myself — suddenly said that she needed to get pregnant from him and everything would fall into place. I took it and said. And this is my advice … First, it is completely against my beliefs. I advise a person to put another in forced circumstances, to pin him to the wall. To carry out some kind of violence on him. Secondly, he is against my habit of not interfering in someone else’s life. I am against all this! But experience, feminine and worldly, pushes me, says: tact is not the best adviser. And if a person trusts me, and I treat a person sincerely, then I should forget about tact or high principles. Before, I would never have done this — I would have kept my distance to the last. And now no.
Do you think this is called the female experience?
J.L.: This is the experience of an older person. And to the fullest — intense, rich. Yes — and the experience of a woman. When you have children… you look at everything from a different angle — at your relationship with the world, with men. I said that that girl needed to have a baby also because her own coordinate system would change.
- «Our divorce went well»
How has yours changed?
J.L.: With the birth of children, I was no longer number one on my own priority list. Now they are number one. I can’t even imagine how I could perform — and then I had a world concert tour — almost until the seventh month of pregnancy! Now I would never do that: all my thoughts are that it will be good, convenient, great for children. I can’t even part with them — they travel with me all over the world. Max and Emmy were born by c-section, and after the operation, I refused painkillers — well, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, never any drugs, so no painkillers either. And because of the pain, I could not even take them in my arms. A nanny appeared — only for 6 weeks, but appeared. That’s when this horror seized me: they will love her, but not me. On a sober look — nonsense, well, how can a creature of two weeks of age love there? But I thought it could! He will love the nanny, but not me. It might have seemed like I was having a tantrum, but in fact, this is how I came to the discovery of great importance — that it is possible to love someone more than yourself! Mark said: in the form of such emotions, a hormonal storm flows in you. But I quite consciously felt: I should be with my children, this love is the most important thing in the world. The hormonal storm passed, but this belief remained … Probably, after the birth of children, I finally matured. Before that, I lived as if in anticipation of a different life, everything was preparing for some wonderful “tomorrow”. And the children made me understand that “tomorrow” has come, that we live in a long “today”. That it is impossible to experience greater love than for them … And then I made another discovery. An amazing sense of guilt. Guilt for the fact that you cannot hold your child by the hand, always in your arms, at every single moment of life. I still feel this feeling, although the children grow up and soon they will not even need my presence. This is some kind of original maternal instinct in me. Animal. But I like the animal nature that we have. It is our most sincere part.
Still, something ambiguous is heard in your advice to that girl. A condescending attitude towards a man as a controlled being, or something …
J.L.: What do you! In no case! It’s just not a sin sometimes, you know, to take on the role of Destiny. And now I know for sure that men — for the most part — love children from their beloved women. And they don’t care if they are children by blood or not. They easily leave their children to love, so to speak, strangers. And these strangers for them become more their own.
Are you sure that you do not harbor any resentment towards the opposite sex?
J.L.: Not! I don’t even think it’s that different. And the main people in my life who had a huge impact on me are men. My dad. He is from the category of holy men — who wholeheartedly care for a woman, are not able to upset her even fleetingly. He is so devoted to his women — his mother and us, three daughters. And each of us knew that the father is always, under any circumstances, our support. Once I left the house, slamming the door, but I still felt inside myself that it was make-believe … Another important man for me is my ex-husband Mark (Mark Anthony, musician and singer. — Approx. ed.). He is the father of the main joy in my life, my children. Even after the divorce, I have no resentment against him. We parted ways by mutual agreement, although…
Divorce is tough though.
J.L.: Yes. We were together for 7 years, and I simply did not think of this divorce. I grew up in a close-knit family and, it seemed, finally found my family … But somehow everything went wrong, we stopped understanding each other. And here is the divorce. I did not sink into depression for a long time only because I categorically do not want to belong to those women who can lie under the covers all day long, covering themselves with their heads and nursing their pain. For some time I was still depressed, but I knew for sure that I had to go through it and move on. If I had not felt like an adult, becoming a mother, I might not have survived. Divorce is, in general, a thing for adults.
Your current partner is 18 years younger than you. Is this difference noticeable to you?
“I LIKE THE ANIMAL BEGINNING THAT WE HAVE IN US. THIS IS OUR MOST SINCERE PART»
J.L.: Big difference, yes. But somehow for me it means nothing. We do a common thing: Casper is the choreographer of my show, we are interested together, we always have topics for conversation, we have common interests. We are together simply because we like being together. And if people break up, is it for some reason, say, because of the difference in age?
Do you think you have already found the formula for a strong relationship?
J.L.: Durable? There is nothing stronger than love. Although it is strong, it is also fragile, hard, but also brittle… The rest is only ourselves, our effort to accept the other. There are no perfect people, and the one you love is not perfect either. You just have to accept its imperfection. Once and for all, agree that you will have to disagree with the one you love. Do not agree with him, with some of his features, with what he can sometimes be. This for me is both the meaning and the guarantee of a more or less happy relationship. And then, of course, I am fully aware: if a man appears in my life, then he fills some kind of gap in me — the lack of some part of me. I believe that an indissoluble bond is possible between a man and a woman, forever, until the death of both. Of course I do — but I just have no right not to believe in fairy tales! I myself am an example of how fairy tales come true in reality. A girl from a Puerto Rican family, a Latina from the criminal Bronx … But now you are interviewing me!