Also transcribed by Imko
Diva Pitch
While other icons crash and burn, Jennifer Lopez's star refuses to fade. As she swings back into the spotlight, Michael Martin is granted an audience with the most glamorous woman on the planet.
SURROUNDED BY HER ENTOURAGE -- including celebrity hairdresser Ken Paves, a team of publicists, assorted make-up artists and her preferred caterers - she is
also entirely in her element, striking pose after pose with machine-like precision. The photo studio in New York's Meatpacking district is on red
security alert. It's filled with a winding maze of ceiling-height foam boards pinned together to shield the star against onlookers, a closed set within a
closed set, which must constantly be rearranged and stabilised by panting PAs in order to prevent collapse.
Having been informed that Jennifer doesn't really like slack-jawed onlookers gawping at her, I've been left standing behind a screen watching the
images of her pop up on a computer, shot by shot. It's like The Wizard Of Oz, I'm thinking. Surely there must be some kind of magic filter turning a
more ordinary looking woman into the charisma machine I'm seeing on screen.
Quietly, I inch my way around the foam boards to sneak a peak it the non-virtual J-Lo.
R&B is cranking out of the stereo as she stands in front of the camera - chin lowered, eyes wide.
Nino Muñoz, the celebrity and fashion photographer, hardly has to prompt her as she arches her back or tosses her hair, switching positions effortlessly,
never asking, "Does my bum look big in this?" She knows it's perfect.
"Jennifer knows how to work her light, baby!" Paves is shouting.
That she does. Suddenly she strikes a pose that recalls a Greek statue hurling javelin and the room erupts into hollers and applause.
"Amazing" says a publicist. "So amazing," corrects a gawker.
She strides past us, and from a few inches away, I can confirm that Lopez does, in fact, warrant the qualifier 'so'. This is a woman for whom Photoshop was not invented; a fireball of old-fashioned star power. As she heads off set to change, it's as though someone has turned the lights out, until she struts back in record time to assume another position. Lopez is one of the hardest-working women in show business, James Brown in a blow-out. Today, her job is to look like the most desirable woman in the world... and she's not doing half-bad.
At what point does a woman become more myth than mortal? Is it when her love life makes frontpage news on three continents (she's been married three times, and engaged twice?) Or when she becomes universally known by three simple letters and a hyphen? Perhaps it's when rumours circulate that her bottom is insured for £150m and enjoys fame independent from its owner? Whatever the answer, since Lopez exploded on to the scene more than a decade ago, there's been something about Jenny - a woman who, at 38, still looks better than most starlets half her age.
But despite a decade's worth of blinged-up fabulousness, industry watchers are saying it's crunch time for the Latina icon. Having provided some of the most indelible pop-culture images of recent years - the butt, the bling, Diddy, Jenny From The Block, Ben Affleck, furs, diamonds, speedboats... to say nothing about that backless/frontless green thing she wore to the Grammys seven years ago -- Lopez now stands at crossroads. Since she got married in 2004 to Puerto Rican singer Marc Anthony, she has began to shy away from the jewel-drenched, flashbulb existence she was famed for. People are worrying the diva has been diluted.
"Well I don't work as much as I used to," she says, curling up in a chair for our interview. Up chose, she is divine-looking and polite to a fault. Her voice is slightly hoarse, making her sound sweet and sexy. "There's more of a balance between work and personal live now. Before, all I did was work. I didn't care about much else to be honest with you. Getting married and getting more settled and having a purpose in your life really grounds you. "You realise what's important and that affects what you do professionally. At the end of the day, it's all a reflection of you and your family."
'At the end of the day' is Lopez's new catchphrase, and she uses it several times throughout our conversations. But if she's thinking
about the final analysis, she shows no sign of quitting. After a string of commercial disappointments (more evidence of her crossroads), this autumn sees the
release of her sixth studio album, Brave, two new films and a major concert tour. For Lopez, it's a turning point as she works to reinvent herself. It
might also be a marker that things have not turned out quite as she had expected.
CONTINUING...
Later she wooed -- and nearly wed -- the actor Ben Affleck, earning them the shared moniker 'Bennifer'. The couple produced a pair of notorious cinematic stinkers, Gigli and Jersey Girl (pure coincidence, surely). She was saddled with a Worst Actress Razzie Award for her performance in the former, and several of her subsequent projects then failed to meet expectations: 2005's Monster-In-Law, co-starring Jane Fonda, was gleefully slated by critics; her album Rebirth launched just one hit single. But she bristles at the suggestion that all is not on the up. "Which didn't perform well?" she says. "Monster-In-Law did very well."
In truth, despite critics' protests, the film grossed $154 million worldwide. And her last album, is (according to her label, at least) the biggest-selling Spanish-language release ever. Whatever anyone else thinks, to Lopez, her new album is not a comeback, just the next chapter in her working live. "It didn't really occur to me," she says. "I've come to terms with things other people haven't when they're looking from the outside. In anybody's career, nobody bats 1,000. You have ups and downs. Some things are going to do great, and some things are not. You just have to go with the flow. If you're really dedicated to what you do, you just have to keep going. And that's never scared me."
HER NEW ALBUM IS A PURE RADIO-DANCE-pop confection, full of fizzy beats and foamy lyrics about love, perseverance and identity preservation.
It puts her firmly back on the dancefloor, the place where her first album, On The 6, took off, launching her superstar status. "Even if it's just a fun dance record it can't be too fluffy, though. I can't get with that," she says, somewhat serious.
The album seems to offer tantalising glimpses into her psyche and romantic issues in the past and present, with lines such as "Maybe should have stayed with someone/Who never knew I was true" (Affleck?) and "In a previous relationship I might have been mischievous" (Diddy?). Of course, she won't cop to this. "In a way, all my albums are autobiographical," she says, smiling. "There's nothing you can do in music without drawing from your own experience."
As ever, the image around Lopez's output is crafted to perfection this time, particularly in the video for the first single, Do It Well, directed by notorious flesh-monger David LaChapelle. In it, Lopez takes on one of her raunchiest roles yet -- a dominatrix running around liberating the denizens of some sort of leather-and-chains-dance-club.
Is she a dominatrix in the home too, I enquire? Perhaps a good thwack of the whip is her secret for marital harmony? Sadly, it seems not -- Lopez claims to have no tricks up her sleave for wedded bliss. "It's hard work," she says. "I wish I had the answer. At the end of the day, it's just like anything. Everybody in the world puts so much effort into their job. If you put that much effort into your relationship, you'd have the best relationship in the world. I don't think people take the time."
I can't help wondering if her work ethic extends to the bedroom. "Oh, I don't give out those kinds of things," she laughs, seductively. "I hope for most people it's natural. Natural passion between two people, that's why you're together. Chemestry is everything -- I really do believe that. It's the intangible, something that you understand about the person, and they understand about you. It's mutual. You can't explain it. When you get close to someone, you either have chemistry or you don't."
One thing that she is getting used to is the name J-Lo. She has spoken abot her alter-ego (also the title of her 2001 album) not being a real person, so much so that she wanted to call her follow-up Call Me Jennifer. "Actually, I don't really have a problem with J-Lo now," she clarifies. "I like it. It's part of who I am at this point. There's no way to seperate the two. I think it's my family who take more aversion to it than anybody. They're like, 'Your name is Jennifer -- not J-Lo!' And I reply, 'I know!' But what can I do? It stuck"
Does she think Hollywood has changed in the last decade? "No, I think it's the same," she says. But in a world of troubled tabloid girls, she has managed to keep her head, which these days seem like an impossible feat. "My work was very important for to me," she says. "I had a good family. They kept me very grounded. There was never any problem for me. It wasn't my scene."
We talk about her views on skinny tabloid starlets: "That's never been me. I think as long as you're healthy, that's the most important thing," she says. "You just have to go with who you are. Some of these girls get criticised, and they don't have a problem. Some of them do."
CONTINUING....
AT SOME POINT, JENNY FROM THE BLOCK TURNED HERSELF INTO Jenny of the shops, becoming a Martha Stewart of mass-market glamour. Now, in addition to her fragrances and fashion line, she has started a production company that will create TV Showsl she has already produced a series for MTV about dancers and plans to produce another about yound Latina girls. As for advice for future celbrity milti-branders? "I don't get involved in anything I don't care about," she says. "Business-wise, if you get involved with something just for the money, it's going to be nowhere."
Well, there must be plenty of cash now. Why not espace with your riches and retire? "I've never done anything for money. Not even when I first started. There was something inside me that wanted to be a singer, wanted to be a dancer, wanted to be an actress. I've worked hard and I've been able to do that. But with me it's always, 'How can I be better? What other songs can I make? What else can I do?' That's what I think about when I wake up each day. Not like, 'How am I going to make more money?'. I think the success has come because of that. It's because I love what I do, and I want to do it at a level of quality that people enjoy and relate to. And they will, because I'm a person too and I go through these things. It's not about bling and fabulousity and those superficial things."
Some might cheer the sentiment. Lopez has often produced her best work when pursuing a more down-beat aesthetic, such as in Steven Soderbergh's Out Of Sight, her most-applauded performance. Perhaps she has realised this is where she should head back to -- she recently signed up to star in Love And Other Impossible Pursuits, a dramedy about a woman's relationship with her step-son, set for release in 2009. It's written and directed by Don Roos, the renegade auteur behind The Opposite of Sex and Happy Endings.
But no matter how many art films she has stared in, doesn't Lopez worry will forever be associated with the 'superficial things' that she now thinks are so unimportant?
"Probably. But I'm fine with it!" she says. "It's when people try to act like it's all you are that it bothers me. It's not all I am. I love fashion and I always have. I find things like that very fun -- like any girl -- but my life is about so much more than that. After my family, what's most important is what I do as a singer, and artist and an actress. I love doing the work.
"At the end of the day, I think people will look back on it and see I was a very productive person who created a lot of things and really cared about her work and wanted to be good at it and wanted to do and make beautiful things." she laughs, "I'm sure they'll say '...and she was fabulously dressed' or whatever."
BACK IN THE STUDIO, THE R&B IS STILL THUMPING. LOPEZ IS BACK in front of the camera, Guccy stilettos on, looking like a billion dollars. As she starts throwing shapes for the camera to applause from the crowd I start to doubt whether she's changed at all. I certainly can't imagine her hanging up her diamanté hotpants any time soon.
Then she does something surprising. It turns out she's not tempted by the luxury spread on offer for lunch (crudités, exotic fruit salad etc). Is she about to throw a Streisand-style fit? Far from it. Instead, Lopez quietly approaches an Arena staffer and asks for an egg sandwich. Cheap bread, extra mayo: she loves them, apparently. I smile. Jennifer Lopez: Queen of Bling, lover of egg sandwiches. This diva could surprise us after all. ---- END
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