Jennifer Lopez Biography

Jennifer Lynn Lopez, known around the world as J. Lo, was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1969, to Puerto Rican parents who stressed a strong work ethic and a simple Catholic faith. Lopez has proved since the beginning of her career that persistence and hard work are more important than talent and looks (though she has all these attributes as well), as she spent her late teens and early twenties balancing work in law offices, dance and acting classes, endless auditions, and dance club performances. After several failures auditioning as a dancer for In Living Color, she finally landed her first regular high-profile gig as a Fly Girl dancer on the comedy show in 1991.

The early 1990s found Lopez in a succession of short-lived television shows, including South Central, Hotel Malibu, and the more, while she continued to dance in music videos, including Janet Jackson's "That's the Way Love Goes" in 1993. In 1995 Lopez got her first movie role in Mi Familia, and made the movie Money Train with Wesley Snipes shortly thereafter. She was the first Latina actress to get a one million dollar role, in the 1997 biopic Selena. In the late 1990s through 2003, she saw a spate of films, including Anaconda, U-Turn, Out of Sight, Antz, The Cell, The Wedding Planner, Angel Eyes, and Enough.  These roles elevated her asking price from the low seven figures to 12 million dollars for the 2003 flop, Gigli, which she made with then-boyfriend Ben Affleck. Lopez made $15 million for Monster-In-Law, making it her biggest payday to date. Following that, she made the film called An Unfinished Life, for a quarter of her previous salary, most likely for the opportunity to work with Robert Redford and burnish her acting chops. Her newest movie, Bordertown, is currently in production.