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Jennifer Lopez is hotter than ever!
After taking some time off from the celebrity spotlight, megastar Jennifer Lopez is back with two new albums and films. Is she still a Cristal-sipping diva?
By Louis Gannon
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Jennifer Lopez is clearly one very happy woman. The reason for this becomes apparent when she stops mid-sentence to check her BlackBerry. "It's from Marc," she says, her face softening as she scrolls down the tiny screen. "We're having a night in tonight -- just the two of us. He wants to know when I'll be home." She grins as she pulls her cozy grey cashmere sweater around herself and stretches her denim-clad legs out on the coffee table in front of her. Right now, she's in the mood to talk about everything -- love, music, moisturizers... and Marc.
"I don't think I've ever felt this settled or balanced or focused in my life," she says with a smile. "It feels just amazing to me." Lopez has undergone a metamorphosis of sorts. Three years ago, six months after she quietly married Latino singer Marc Anthony in the backyard of her former Hollywood Hills home, she made the decision to stop being JLo -- to step away from the madness of celebrity and find out exactly who Jennifer Lopez is.
She can't help but empathize with Britney Spears, whose face is splashed across the tabloids week after week, as Lopez's once was. "I feel very sorry for Britney because I understand what she's going through," she says. "It's very easy to judge from the outside, but if you've been in that situation, you know how hard things can get. Everything becomes so mad. I mean, the lifestyle can be great and exciting, but it's just totally full-on. I decided to get off the spinning-carousel ride. It was a definite choice I made, and I have to say that it was quite a scary one because -- even though you know you want the madness to stop -- once you stop it and get off, your first instinct is to panic and jump right back on again. But I wanted peace and balance in my life. I wanted to take stock and, most of all, I wanted my marriage to work -- I so, so wanted it to work." She laughs wryly. "Believe me, I've made all the mistakes where relationships are concerned. I've been burned, I've been bashed and I've been beaten, but I've never allowed myself to stop believing that one day I would get it right. I knew I had to give our love a chance to grow without being swamped by the whole celebrity circus."
Her rise to fame
In truth, Lopez's story has always been unbelievably high-octane. Born in the tough Bronx area of New York, she says that she was determined to be a star. After years of endless auditions as a singer, a dancer and an actress ("I always cast my net wide," she says, laughing) and small breaks on TV shows, her sudden, dramatic rise in Hollywood came -- thanks to the sort of sexual chemistry that money can't buy -- when she co-starred with George Clooney in the film Out of Sight. All of a sudden, she was a star. She was the first Latino actress ever to command $1 million per movie and the first actress in decades to prove that a curvy size 6 can scorch a screen unlike anything else.
Lopez's marriage to former waiter Ojani Noa disintegrated in the first flames of her success. Undaunted, she launched herself not only as an actress but also as a singer and fashion icon. Alongside her multimillionaire rap-star boyfriend, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Lopez heralded a new era of diamond-encrusted diva bling. The tabloids were full of tales about her demands for 600-thread-count sheets, all-white rooms and Cristal champagne. In 1999, Lopez and Combs were at a New York nightclub where three people were injured in a shooting; both were arrested but later cleared of any involvement. By 2001, their relationship had crumbled. Less than a year later, with helicopters flying overhead and the paparazzi risking their necks for just one shot, Lopez married her quiet, caring dancer Cris Judd. A year on, that relationship ended too (although they remain friends to this day), and, in 2002, she began her craziest romance ever, with her Gigli co-star, Ben Affleck.
Tabloid headlines featured "Bennifer," their press-anointed joint title. It was a high-speed love affair: there were pink diamonds, fast cars and the sort of Hollywood excess that was fated to crash and burn -- which it did, when all speculation about their marriage ended after Affleck's ill-advised fling with a lap dancer.
Check out these exotic celebrity weddings!
Image courtesy of WireImage.com
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