Total Film Magazine: June 1998

Lips that could cushion a fall. Hair that whips across one peach of a pout. A derriere you could balance a dinner service on. She’s the Latino A-lister in waiting. But not for much longer: her performance in Steven Soderbergh’s “Out Of Sight” will see her soar. The bottom line? Jennifer Lopez is on a learning curve. And she’s still rising…



Elmore Leonard would like to apologise. His action thriller “Out Of Sight” is not as sexy as Steven Soderbergh‘s screen adaptation. He offers one reason for this: “You put Jennifer Lopez in it, that’s going to make it sexy.

Few men would argue. As Chanel-dressing, no-nonsense US Marshal Karen Sisco, Lopez has a difficult-to-define sexual quality. Its not just that she looks sensational. Or that the chemistry between her and co-star George Clooney could melt the car boot they’re trapped in. There’s something else at work there. An attitude of total confidence.

And it’s that attitude which landed Lopez in a whole heap of trouble a few months ago. The 28-year-old is renowned for speaking her mind. Last February she gave an interview to American mag Movieline, in which she declared she was better than any other actress around. When asked to respond to a list of her peers, she replied almost entirely with disparaging remarks. On Cameron Diaz: “A lucky model who’s been given a lot of opportunities I just wish she would have done more with.” On Gwyneth Paltrow: “Tell me again what she’s been in. I swear to God I don’t remember anything that she was in.” On Winona Ryder: “I was never a big fan of hers.” Get the picture? However refreshing it sounds to an outsider to finally hear a movie star speak her mind, this kind of honesty isn’t going to win her many friends in Hollywood.

George Clooney is sympathetic: “Jennifer is great. She was just starting to get things going and then she had that Movieline article which kind of jinxed her. We all do ‘em. There should really be someone who gives you lessons about fame and teaches you what to say and what not to do. You can’t just say what’s on your mind, and whatever’s true today might not be true 15 minutes from now. But you learn as you go.”

Lopez is a survivor, and Clooney doesn’t disguise his admiration for his co-star. “She had to battle after the Movieline incident and it was really fun to be around her then because she’s a real fighter,” he says. “She’s a nice girl and she’s also talented and smart. She stepped into a place that put her where she had to struggle hard and she coped really well. Jennifer apologized to the people she should apologize to…”

But Lopez has a right to a certain arrogance. The youngest of three sisters born to Puerto Rican parents in the Bronx, she traveled a slow road to fame as a Latino actress. But she’s protective of her inner-city roots. “They made this movie called Fort Apache: The Bronx and everybody thinks that’s what the Bronx is really like, some kind of war zone or something. Its nothing like that! It’s just like any other inner city. I grew up in what I consider to be a nice neighborhood and for me it was… Well, it was normal.”

She started out as a dancer, alongside older sister Leslie. “My mother raised us on musicals. She would sit us in front of the television and we’d watch things like West Side Story – my favourite film of all time – and I loved it. I just knew it was something I wanted to do. So I was in dance class from when I was really little, and in high school I would do all the school plays.

“After I left high school I knew I wanted to perform as a career, although I didn’t know how to go about it. But I would go from the Bronx to Manhattan to take dance classes and that led to me doing some videos (notably Janet Jackson’s That’s The Way Love Goes) and from there it took off. I came out to LA to do In Living Color (a sketch show, whose fellow alumni include Do The Right Thing’s Rosie Perez) and I was taking full-time acting classes.” Unfortunately, Leslie never shared her sisters level of ambition: her film career stalled after 1987′s The Rosary Murders, leaving her younger sis to carry the family name alone on to stardom. Jennifer Lopez is generous in praising I her siblings talents but claims it was her own ability to deal a with rejection that gave her the edge. Leslie hated it: Jennifer used it to make her stronger.

Most ironically, she was rejected by Oliver Stone, when he I was casting his Manuel Noriega film project (which never made it to the big screen). He decided that arranging his papers would be more interesting than watching her audition. Lopez left, swearing she’d never work for him, even it he begged her…

She had also been the only saving grace of the misguided Woody Harrelson/ Wesley Snipes vehicle Money Train, and earned respectable reviews for Selena, the bio-pic about Mexican singer Selena Quintanilla who met a messy end. Stone wanted Lopez to star alongside Nick Nolte and Sean Penn in redneck thriller U-Turn. But then there was a problem: the studio wanted Sharon Stone for the role and Sharon Stone wanted megabucks. However, Lopez was the director’s first choice, and eventually he won out. As a result, her opinion of Oliver Stone has improved drastically. Ask her about any of her directors, from Stone and Soderbergh to Francis Ford Coppola (Jack) and Bob Rafelson (Blood And Wine), and she’ll reply: “I love them all!”

Not surprising, since they’ve all, at various times, gone on the line for her, fighting to have her star in their movies, even when there were bigger names chasing the roles. When she joined the cast of Rafelson‘s Blood And Wine which included Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine – she found it hard not to be intimidated.

“It was incredible working with Jack. I mean, he’s like a legend! The first time I met him it was like: ‘Oh my God! That’s Jack Nicholson…’ I remember the first day of rehearsal. He came in, sat down and the director wanted me to sit next to him because ours was the prominent man-woman relationship in the film. Michael Caine was sitting on the other side, and I looked at one and then the other. Then it was like I had an out-of-body experience! I wondered to myself: ‘What am I doing in this room with these people?’ It was very scary. But fun.”

She also won out over Sandra Bullock when it came to casting the lead for Out Of Sight. The one-time Speed queen was Universal’s number one choice for the movie, and she even met with Clooney and Soderbergh. But they insisted that Bullock test for the role, and she refused. Then came Lopez’s chance to step in and wow them, which she did with ease. She made such an impact that her fee was upped to £2 million: only a fifth of Clooneys pay cheque, but not bad for an actress just creeping onto the A-list.

“Roles like Karen Sisco in Out Of Sight are few and far between. This is an exceptional script and she is an exceptional character. I’m not just there to look good opposite George Clooney. She’s driving the story and that’s the type of role I need right now.”

She’s surprised at all the fuss that’s being made over her sex appeal in the movie. “When I approach a character, I don’t think: ‘Oh, I’m going to make her sexy.’ I go in from a different point of view, I try to get more into who she is and why she does what she does, whether she is confident, whatever. If that comes across as sexy then fine. But its about all sorts of things. It’s about wardrobe, it’s like the clothes are sexy and that helps, you know what I mean? I think what made this character sexy was the fact she was so confident and easy and secure with herself, more than me trying to act sexy.”

There’s a memorable sequence in Out Of Sight when Lopez and Clooney are shackled together in the boot of a car. Everyone who’s seen the film singles this scene out as one of the sexiest on-screen moments ever. But, when asked what it was like being trapped in the trunk with Clooney, Lopez merely replies: “Hot! And funny...”

She’s less than enthusiastic about all her new-found fame. “When all the press started happening, I was like: ‘My God, what have I done?’ It’s not exactly something that happened overnight. It feels more like a steady climb. I started out dancing in videos, followed by musical theatre, then moved to television and finally on to movies.

“I don’t think I’ve changed but there is the aspect that people’s perception of you changes when you become famous. It’s weird how people treat you, its a little strange. Somebody, who obviously had faith, once told me: ‘When you become a star everybody around you is going to say you’ve changed, but it’s not going to be you. What will change is everybody around you, the way they look at you.’ I think there’s an element of truth in that.”

Which helps explain the negative reaction to the Movieline article. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Lopez says, “because I feel its a misrepresentation of who I am. That was not a good thing. But it has made me very careful. I’ve learned a lot this year about many different things – and not just as a result of that…”

Off screen, it’s been a tough 12 months for Lopez.

She’s divorcing her husband of a year, model and restaurateur Ojani Noa, and has been linked in the press with Mariah Carey’s ex-svengali/husband Tommy Mottola, as well as various rap stars. The Mottola connection resulted in her burgeoning singing career, but his involvement has been professional rather than personal and Lopez denies any rumours of romance.

“Actually, I had a record deal before I even started acting. It just didn’t come to fruition and then my acting career took off. But when I did Selena I realised how much I missed singing and dancing. Its just something I always wanted to do. I don’t know about conquering the music market, I just want to make a song that everyone sings along to. I don’t want to look back and see that I didn’t even try when I had the opportunity.”

Her album is scheduled for release next year. In the meantime, Lopez is becoming more involved behind the camera. “I’m developing a script that a friend of mine wrote. I don’t want to say too much about it because we’re trying to find a director and I want to produce it. I’ll be the boss and its going to feel good. And I’ll make sure I get a great production team. It’s good to take your career into your own hands and not just be reactive. I think more women are doing that and that’s a great thing for women in this business.”

“Actually, I had a record deal before I even started acting. It just didn’t come to fruition and then my acting career took off. But when I did Selena I realised how much I missed singing and dancing. Its just something I always wanted to do. I don’t know about conquering the music market, I just want to make a song that everyone sings along to. I don’t want to look back and see that I didn’t even try when I had the opportunity.”

c'est amusant de lire ça, je me suis toujours demandé ou en serait sa carrière maintenant si If you had my love n'avait pas marché.