Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck at the premiere of ‘Marry me’ (Image: Getty Images / Rich Fury)
“I feel so lucky and happy and proud to be with him,” says Lopez, sounding not unlike a starry-eyed teenager. Marry Me, which is released today, sees her playing a singing superstar who is jilted at the altar, prompting her character to wed a random fan: a maths teacher played by Midnight In Paris star Owen Wilson.
Happily inching toward tying the knot with Affleck in the real world, she looks back on her own broken romantic dreams and sees much of herself in her character isolated by fame and struggling to find true love.
“Sometimes you feel kinda caught,” she admits.”Okay, I’m trapped in this thing, I’m trapped in this life, this is all I can do, and I don’t really get to have a life, or a love, like everybody else.”
Lopez, whose hit movies include Selena, Out Of Sight and Anaconda, admits that she brought her personal history of heartbreak into her latest role.
“The difficult part was the idea of showing what it’s really like inside my bedroom when something goes wrong, and you suffer a heartbreak like this – in front of the whole world,” she admits.
“Living a life in the spotlight has its challenges it has a scrutiny and a judgment to it that most people don’t ever have to deal with.That can be very lonely.”
She was particularly moved by a scene in Marry Me where Wilson asks: “Don’t you just want to give up on the whole love thing?”
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez arrive at the Los Angeles Special Screening Of “Marry Me”. (Image: Getty Images/ Steve Granitz)
A hopeless romantic, she insists: “No – there’s a one-in-a-million chance – no matter what the numbers are – that’s worth it.”
And if J-Lo’s appearance with Affleck at Wednesday’s premiere is anything to go by, that one in a million chance might just be paying off. Looking two decades younger than her 52 years, her long brown hair cascaded over a white lace gown that would have looked right at home in the window of any bridal boutique.
While her career has gone from strength to strength – she now commands $20million per movie – J-Lo found she had a lot in common with her latest character’s search for happiness.
“What she is craving is that love and that home,” she says. “So there were a lot of moments there where I was able to bring a truth to the character and the emotional life that was really authentic.”
Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd in 2001. (Image: Getty Images/ Theo Wargo)
New York-born J-Lo had a nearly decade-long romance with her high school sweetheart David Cruz, before marrying Cuban waiter Ojani Noa in 1997. Divorced after barely a year, she then dated rapper Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy) for two years before wedding former back-up dancer Cris Judd in 2001, another marriage that did not last a year.
She became engaged to Ben Affleck after they met on the set of movie Gigli in 2001, but the couple – dubbed “Bennifer” by wags – broke up in 2004 in part due to intense media pressure.
Calling it “my first real heartbreak”, Lopez confessed: “I think: different time, different thing, who knows what could’ve happened.” On the rebound, she married singer Marc Anthony in 2004 five months after parting with Affleck. They had two children before he filed for divorce in 2012.
Then she had a five-year on-off romance with former back-up dancer Casper Smart, and then, in 2017, began dating New York baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez, becoming engaged in 2019, but splitting in March 2021.
Only a month later, Lopez was spotted holding hands with Affleck, 49, who had divorced his wife of 13 years, actress Jennifer Garner, also 49, with whom he has three children.
Finally happy, Lopez looks back and embraces the romantic heartaches she suffered along the way.
J-Lo and Ben Affleck as a couple in 2003. (Image: Getty Images / Chris Weeks)
“At the time I thought they were failures, but I think that was necessary for growing into something better,” she recently told People magazine.
“I felt tremendous amounts of failure, in my marriage and other relationships I tried really hard to make work. So those failures hit me hard.”
Yet without those failures, she would not be where she is today. “Every single mistake that I made was leading toward a yellow brick road to exactly where I needed to be,” says Lopez.
Where she needed to be, it now appears, is back in Affleck’s arms, and this time she’s being careful not to let public expectations and social media trolls destroy their revived romance. “We both had a little bit of fear,” she admits. “Before, we kind of put it out there and we were naive and it got a little trampled.”
Now, after 17 years apart, she says: “We’re older now, we’re smarter, we have more experience, we’re at different places in our lives, we have kids now and we have to be very conscious of those things.
“We’ve both grown: we’re the same, and we’re different. And that’s what’s nice.”
Marry Me also gave Lopez the opportunity to combine two passions – acting and singing – by starring in the movie and recording an album of songs for it, including duets with her co-star, Colombian singer Maluma.
“It was a first for me,” she says. “Such a pleasure to have my two worlds come together.”
Is there anything that dancer-singer-actor Lopez can’t do? “There’s so much I can’t do, there’s not even enough time to get into it,” she laughs. “But I do feel very lucky that I get to do all the things that I do. “I feel like I’m at a point in my career where I’m hitting my stride with what I know my abilities to be, and being confident in that.
“When I was younger I was a little bit more insecure and finding my way. It’s great to be at a point in my life where I feel like I really know myself and I trust myself. But there’s definitely a lot of things I cannot do. I really suck at basketball, of all things.”
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Antony in 2012. (Image: Getty Images/Ethan Miller)
Marry Me also represents a return to the rom-com genre, where Lopez made her name with such hit films as Maid In Manhattan, The Wedding Planner and Gigli.
“I, as a movie-goer, love romantic comedies,” she says. “Those are some of my favourite movies of all time, whether it’s When Harry Met Sally or Prelude To A Kiss – any of those types of movies in the Meg Ryan-Julia Roberts era.
“I grew up on those movies in a way and I love them so much, so it is a kind of homecoming for me because I haven’t done one in a few years.”
She recently finished filming another romantic comedy, Shotgun Wedding, opposite Josh Duhamel, due for release this summer.
But off-screen, this time around with Affleck, she plans to keep their romance out of the public eye as much as possible.
With Valentine’s Day on Monday that means celebrating far from the madding crowd.
“The ideal Valentine’s Day is just me and my partner alone, in a place where we don’t have to worry about people watching us… where we can have some private moments where we can really talk about life and love and just really appreciate the company and being in love and being together.”
Romantic to the end, she says: “I honestly believe that love rules all.”
But off-screen, this time around with Affleck, she plans to keep their romance out of the public eye as much as possible.
With Valentine’s Day on Monday that means celebrating far from the madding crowd.
“The ideal Valentine’s Day is just me and my partner alone, in a place where we don’t have to worry about people watching us… where we can have some private moments where we can really talk about life and love and just really appreciate the company and being in love and being together.”
Romantic to the end, she says: “I honestly believe that love rules all.”
