"Nail Polish." – Jennifer Lopez, when asked what she got on her SAT's
Jennifer Lopez was born on July 24th, 1970 in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx in New York City. Her parents were originally from Puerto Rico, with her father working in the computer industry and her mother a kindergarten teacher. She grew up listening to tasty Latin beats and dreaming of becoming a dancer. She is the middle child of three sisters.
At age 16 she made her debut in the movie My Little Girl, but it wasn’t until her performance on the sketch comedy TV show “In Living Color” that she began to get noticed. She graduated from Preston High School in 1987, and afterwards she attended Baruch College for only one semester before spending a year and a half at a dance school in Manhattan. She played as several reoccurring characters on In Living Color, Second Chances, and Hotel Malibu.
At one point she was a dancer for Janet Jackson, but the big break for her was the movie My Family in 1995. This helped her land the role of slain singer Selena Quintanilla Perez in the movie Selena (1997). At this point she was the highest paid Latino actress in history, and her roles the next year in Out of Sight, Anaconda and U-Turn helped cement her in the public lifestyle.
In 1999 she went against the grain to release her debut album On the 6. Many doubted that her move to music would be as successful as her movie career, and wondered if it would diminish her popularity in all areas. To answer that her album sold 2.8 million albums internationally and her music became extremely popular, with no small thanks due to MTV and their frequent playing of her ass-fabulous videos. She released a large number of singles from On the 6, including If you had my love, Waiting For Tonight, Feelin' So Good, Let's Get Loud and No Me Ames (with Marc Anthony).
She released her second album, entitled her self prescribed nickname J-Lo, continued the tradition of the dance videos and Latin beats, releasing singles such as Love Don't Cost a Thing, Play and I'm Real. This album was followed up later by a remix album. In 2002 she released her latest album called “This is Me ... Then”, with the single Jenny from the Block.
With all this singing and booty shaking you might think she gave movies a break. Well sonny Jim, you’d be wrong, thanks to such movies as The Cell, The Wedding Planner, Angel Eyes, and Enough. As of this writing, she’s working on three movies that have yet to be released, namely Jersey Girl, Gigli, and Maid in Manhattan.
But why did you read this far? Yeah, I thought so, you wanted to hear about Puffy and Affleck. So far Ms. Lopez has been involved with two failed marriages, one gun toting bad boy, and this tall goofy guy (minus all the early boyfriends that no one really cares about). She was married to Ojani Noa from the making of Selena until sometime in 1998. She started dating bad boy rapper/producer Puff Daddy, but trouble brewed shortly after he got them both arrested on gun related charges after a night club shooting. They broke up in early 2001, when she began dating her choreographer and dancer Cris Judd. She married him on the 29th of September, 2001. They divorced in July of 2002, and by the time of this writing she is already engaged to actor Ben Affleck. He will be starring in two of her upcoming movies, and was featured prominently in her video for “Jenny from the Block”. Frankly I’m surprised she never married Puffy, he’s such an upstanding individual.
The general feeling of my friends is that she is hot, so therefore worth listening to. How the “hot=good singer” connection works is beyond me, but it certainly helps her sell albums and at the box offices.
According to the man, the legend, mr100percent, J-Lo was also a backup dancer for MC Hammer, thus entering her into the worldwide club of those associated with that level of coolness.
Discography
Filmography
Sources
http://members.tripod.com/~McClane/biography.html
http://www.rollingstone.com
http://www.imdb.com
http://www.allmusic.com
http://the-alist.org/JenniferLopez
my head