Jennifer Lopez

1997–1999: Breakthrough with Selena and On the 6

With her casting as the singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez in the biopic Selena (1997), Lopez became the first Latina actress to earn $1 million. She described her salary for the film as a "statement to the world", but expressed disappointment that other Latina actors were not being afforded the same opportunities. Despite having previously worked with the film's director Gregory Nava on Mi Familia, Lopez participated in an intense auditioning process and spent time with the late singer's family in Corpus Christi, Texas before filming began. Selena was a box office hit, and Lopez's performance received critical acclaim. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described it as "a star-making performance" and wrote: "She has the star presence to look convincing in front of 100,000 fans." Lopez received her first Golden Globe nomination for the performance. Nava asked the heads of Warner Bros. to fund an Academy Award campaign for Lopez but was told the academy would "never nominate a Latina." Later in 1997, Lopez starred opposite Ice Cube in the horror film Anaconda, which received negative reviews from critics but was a box office success. Joe Leydon of Variety found the film "silly" but said it deserved "a little credit" for being "the first movie of its kind to have a Latina and an African-American" as its stars. In the crime film U Turn (1997), Lopez appeared topless in a sex scene that was added by director Oliver Stone during filming. Speaking in 2003, Lopez said it was not something "I would have chosen to do" and that she and Stone fought over it: "It's hard being the only woman on a set."

Lopez starred opposite George Clooney in the crime caper Out of Sight (1998), Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of the Elmore Leonard 1996 novel. Cast as a deputy federal marshal who falls for a charming criminal, she won rave reviews for her performance. Janet Maslin of The New York Times described it as her "best movie role thus far, and she brings it both seductiveness and grit; if it was hard to imagine a hard-working, pistol-packing bombshell on the page, it couldn't be easier here." Turan of the Los Angeles Times described Lopez as "an actress who can be convincingly tough and devastatingly erotic" and said the film solidified "her position as a woman you can confidently build a film around." In 2021, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian named Lopez and Clooney's partnership as one of the best examples of on-screen chemistry in cinema history. Also in 1998, Lopez provided the voice of Azteca in the animated film Antz.

Lopez decided to pursue a music career after working on Selena, realizing that she had missed "the excitement of the stage". Her new manager Benny Medina sought to position her as "a brand name that will cross over into all media." Lopez, who was "really feeling [her] Latin roots", recorded a Spanish-language demo for circulation among prospective labels. With Lopez being a high-profile personality, a bidding war ensued. Tommy Mottola, the head of Sony Music's Work Group, signed her but suggested that she sing in English instead. Her record deal with Sony was described as "lucrative", having outbid other offers from Capitol Records and EMI Latin. While Lopez worked on her debut album, Sony "began a major push" to feature her with other high-profile entertainers, leading her to appear in the Sean Combs music video "Been Around the World" (1997).

Her debut album, On the 6 (1999), named after the 6 Subway line which connected her childhood home in the Bronx to Manhattan, was met with positive reviews and further propelled her public profile. The album was a success and Lopez's debut single, "If You Had My Love", topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks, with another single, "Waiting for Tonight", reaching number eight and becoming a celebratory anthem for the new millennium. Other singles from the album included "Let's Get Loud", which became one of Lopez's signature songs, and "No Me Ames", a duet with future husband Marc Anthony. In July 1999, she performed "If You Had My Love" and "Let's Get Loud" at the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup closing ceremony. It was watched by over one billion viewers worldwide, exposing Lopez's music career to a larger international audience.

2000–2002: Box office success, J.Lo and This Is Me... Then

In February 2000, Lopez and then-boyfriend Sean Combs attended the Grammy Awards, with Lopez wearing a plunging green Versace silk chiffon dress. The dress generated worldwide attention and became the most popular search query in Google's history, leading to the creation of Google Images, while boosting Lopez's album and movie ticket sales. Later that year, Lopez starred in the psychological thriller The Cell, for which she received a $4 million salary. The film, where Lopez played a psychologist who uses radical experimental therapy to enter the mind of a killer, received mixed reviews but was a box office success. David Edelstein of Slate remarked that the "imperious" Lopez was "trying to look waifishly expectant" while Amy Taubin of The Village Voice noted that she appeared to be engaged "in some kind of pouting competition" "in lieu of acting."

In January 2001, Lopez became the first woman to have a number-one film and album simultaneously in the United States, with the release of her second album, J.Lo, and her first romantic comedy The Wedding Planner, which co-starred Matthew McConaughey. Lopez had been searching for a romantic comedy role for several years; she wanted to show that she could be "every girl", stating: "I felt like all the women in romantic comedies always looked the same way, they were always white." Despite negative reviews, the film opened at number one at the box office and solidified her place in Hollywood. At the same time, J.Lo debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200; she was the first female solo recording artist under Epic Records to do so since the label's inception in 1953. J.Lo was titled after the nickname she had been given by her fans, with Lopez also adopting J.Lo as her stagename. The album received mixed critical reviews but became the most successful of her career, selling 12 million copies worldwide. It produced four singles: "Love Don't Cost a Thing", which reached number one in various countries, "Play", "I'm Real", and "Ain't It Funny". A remix of "I'm Real" featuring rapper Ja Rule propelled that song to number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

In September 2001, Lopez performed a two-concert residency in Puerto Rico, which marked her first concerts. It was broadcast that November as an NBC special, Jennifer Lopez in Concert, and became one of the most-watched concert specials of the year, with a US audience of almost 12 million. Also in 2001, Lopez founded her production company, Nuyorican Productions, with manager Benny Medina, and starred in the romantic drama, Angel Eyes, opposite Jim Caviezel. Lopez's performance was well-reviewed, though the film was a critical and commercial disappointment. Plans for her to star with Ricky Martin in a Viva Las Vegas remake were scrapped.

Lopez released two albums in 2002. The first was J to tha L–O! The Remixes, which became the first remix album in history to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. Its singles included "Ain't It Funny (Murder Remix)" and "I'm Gonna Be Alright", which reached number one and ten on the Billboard Hot 100, respectively. Lopez's third studio album, This Is Me... Then, was released in late 2002, and was heavily influenced by her relationship with then-fiancé Ben Affleck. It received mixed critical reviews; Billboard's Michael Paoletta noted the "considerable growth she reveals as a performer and tunesmith" on the album, while Jon Caramanica called it "the least interesting music on the pop charts today." The album became a commercial success, achieving the highest opening sales week of her career. The album's lead single, "Jenny from the Block", which peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, was viewed as a response to the notion that Lopez had alienated her "core fan base: the black and Hispanic hip-hop community." The album also spawned the US number-one single "All I Have".

Lopez starred as an abused wife who fights back in the thriller Enough (2002), a role which required her to learn Krav Maga. An overworked Lopez suffered a nervous breakdown in 2001 while filming it. The film received negative reviews; Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times felt it was "tacky material" and was surprised to see "an actress like Jennifer Lopez" involved with the project. Her next film was the romantic comedy, Maid in Manhattan (2002), in which Lopez starred opposite Ralph Fiennes as a maid and single mother from the Bronx. It became the highest-grossing film of her career at the time. Reviewing Maid in Manhattan, A. O. Scott of The New York Times enjoyed Lopez as a romantic lead and said "her greatest skill as an actress" was "her ability to melt without cracking the hard shell of composure she wears." Lopez was ranked among the top ten highest-paid actresses in Hollywood in 2002, earning $8 million per feature.

2003–2006: Media scrutiny

Lopez became the subject of widespread media criticism in 2003 due to her public relationship with Ben Affleck and the tabloid depiction of her as a demanding diva. She fired both her personal manager Benny Medina and her publicist in mid-2003; The New York Times reported that movie executives had become frustrated by having their communications with Lopez "largely filtered" through Medina. That year, Lopez starred opposite Affleck in the romantic comedy Gigli, which was a box-office bomb and is considered one of the worst films of all time. Rex Reed of The Observer criticized the lead actors, calling them "pathetically incompetent" in both "craft and talent". Roger Ebert agreed that the movie "doesn't quite work", but found Lopez and Affleck "appealing in their performances" and noted the couple's chemistry.

Lopez had a minor role opposite Affleck in the film Jersey Girl (2004). Following test audiences' negative reactions to the onscreen couple, her screen time was halved. While she remained one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during this period, Lopez later described this as the lowest point of her career and admitted she felt "eviscerated" by the media coverage surrounding Gigli: "I lost my sense of self, questioned if I belonged in this business, thought maybe I did suck at everything. And my relationship self-destructed in front of the entire world. It was a two-year thing for me until I picked myself up again." Months later, she starred opposite Richard Gere in the romantic comedy-drama Shall We Dance?, which was a box-office success.

She released her fourth studio album, Rebirth, in early 2005. Its title was symbolic of Lopez's hopes for "a new professional beginning". It was recorded during a period where Lopez felt "a little bit lost, trying to get my footing in a new life", "I had just gotten married [to singer Marc Anthony]... I wasn't with Benny [Medina]." In a review of Rebirth, journalist Alexis Petridis remarked that the title "suggests even Lopez has realised that something is amiss with her career... Despite the highlights, you're still left pondering the question: what happened to Jennifer Lopez?" The album reached number two on the Billboard 200, but failed to replicate the sales of her previous albums. Its lead single, "Get Right", however, reached number twelve on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming one of her most successful songs.

The marketing for the romantic comedy Monster-in-Law (2005), in which Lopez starred opposite Jane Fonda, played up her "Gigli-and-tabloid tarnished image", and it became a box office success. She next starred alongside Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman in the drama An Unfinished Life (2005), which received mixed reviews. Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times predicted that the typical review would be unkind: "It will have no respect for Jennifer Lopez, because she is going through a period right now when nobody is satisfied with anything she does... Give Lopez your permission to be good again; she is the same actress now as when we thought her so new and fine."

The next year, she returned to the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 as a featured artist on "Control Myself", the lead single from LL Cool J's twelfth studio album. In 2006, she reunited with director Gregory Nava to star in the crime drama Bordertown as a journalist investigating female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The film was negatively reviewed and received a direct-to-video release. David D'Arcy of Screen Daily found Lopez "unconvincing" as a journalist.

2007–2010: Career downturn

By the late 2000s, Lopez's commercial success had declined. Her music career "entered a plateau", while "her film career entered a period of some disappointing-to-middling successes". In 2007, she starred opposite her then-husband Marc Anthony in the music biopic El Cantante, which told the story of Puerto Rican salsa singer Héctor Lavoe and his wife Puchi. It did not perform well at the box office and received mixed reviews from film critics; Lopez's performance, which she expressed pride in, drew both praise and criticism.

Lopez released two studio albums in 2007. Her fifth album, Como Ama una Mujer, was her first to be recorded entirely in Spanish. Chris Willman of Entertainment Weekly acknowledged that the album offered "fairly persuasive proof" that Lopez can sing, but was unimpressed by the "flaccid torch songs." It became the fifth Spanish album to debut in the top ten of the Billboard 200, and achieved the highest first-week sales for an artist's debut Spanish album at the time. The lead single, "Qué Hiciste", reached number 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 while the second single, "Me Haces Falta", failed to chart. Lopez's sixth studio album, Brave, released later that year, was her lowest-charting album worldwide. Jonathan Bernstein of Entertainment Weekly was disappointed that Lopez had returned to "listless vocals" for her "back-to-the-dance-floor album." The album debuted at number 12 on the Billboard 200 and produced two singles, "Do It Well" and "Hold It Don't Drop It". The first peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, while the latter failed to chart. While pregnant with twins, Lopez embarked upon her first ever concert tour, a show co-headlined by Anthony, in September 2007; the tour was well received. She also created, produced and was featured in the MTV show DanceLife, which she described as a "passion project".

After giving birth to twins in February 2008, Lopez took a career break. She described the next few years as a "strange time" as she primarily focused on family and travelling with Anthony while he toured. After rehiring former manager Medina, Lopez released two songs in late 2009, "Louboutins" and "Fresh Out of the Oven". The songs were intended for her seventh studio album but failed to make an appearance on the Billboard charts, leading to her departure from Sony Music and Epic Records. Lopez's first theatrical role in three years was in the romantic comedy The Back-up Plan (2010). Manohla Dargis of The New York Times was unimpressed by the movie and described Lopez as "an appealing screen presence with a disappointing big-screen track record. That's probably not all her fault: romantic roles for women often are the provenance of the bland or the blonde."

2011–2015: American Idol and career revival

A "big turning point" in Lopez's career came when she joined the judging panel of the singing competition series American Idol for its tenth season, replacing Simon Cowell. Despite being advised that it was a "huge gamble", she accepted the job, as she was "not getting offered a whole bunch of movies". Lopez's appearance on American Idol in 2011 returned her to prominence. Hannah Elliot of Forbes described it as "a remarkable comeback", writing: "Idol humanized her. Viewers who knew only an attention-grabbing siren met a hardworking, self-made, empathetic single mother, who got emotional when contestants did well and when they failed."

2016–2020: Television work, Hustlers and Super Bowl LIV

In January 2016, Lopez commenced a concert residency show, All I Have, at Planet Hollywood's Zappos Theater in Las Vegas. She performed 120 shows during the three-year run, grossing over $100 million in ticket sales. At the beginning of the residency, Lopez signed a multi-album deal with her former label Epic Records—though she would depart the label before releasing any albums—and release

Political views and activism

A supporter of the Democratic Party, Lopez has a long history of backing Democratic candidates for public office. She endorsed President Barack Obama in his 2012 presidential campaign, speaking in television advertisements and attending fundraising events for Obama. She endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, headlining a free concert in Florida in support of her that October.

Lopez has been critical of President Donald Trump. During her Super Bowl halftime show performance in 2020, she performed her song "Let's Get Loud" while cloaked in a large Puerto Rican flag, with children in metal cages displayed on the field. It was interpreted as a statement about the Mexico–United States border crisis and Trump's immigration policy. The NFL attempted to remove the cages from the performance but Lopez refused. She endorsed President Joe Biden in his 2020 presidential campaign. She later performed at Biden's 2021 inauguration, where she sang "This Land Is Your Land" and "America the Beautiful", while reciting the last phrase of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish. She also worked "Let's Get Loud" into the performance as a "reprise" to her political message at the Super Bowl. Lopez endorsed Kamala Harris during her 2024 presidential campaign. She spoke at a Las Vegas rally for Harris that November, pushing back on remarks made at Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden which were deemed offensive to Puerto Ricans.

Lopez is an avid supporter of LGBTQ rights, and has raised millions of dollars for HIV/AIDS research. In June 2013, amfAR presented her with its humanitarian award for her philanthropic work. That September, she was awarded the Ally for Equality award presented by the Human Rights Campaign, for her support of the LGBTQ community. The following year, she received the GLAAD Vanguard Award. In July 2016, Lopez released a single entitled "Love Make the World Go Round", a collaboration with Lin-Manuel Miranda, which benefits victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting. She was also featured on the song "Hands" along with numerous other artists, also benefiting those affected by the Orlando shooting. Lopez signed an open letter from Billboard magazine to the United States Congress in 2016, which demanded action on gun control. In 2017, she participated in the #KeepThePromise campaign, initiated by the film The Promise, a movie about the Armenian genocide.

In June 2020, Lopez attended a Black Lives Matter movement protest in Los Angeles, in connection with the broader George Floyd protests. Lopez has also been an active advocate for the Time's Up movement. In January 2022, she became one of the co-chairs for Michelle Obama's When We All Vote. She expressed solidarity with the people of the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war. As part of a group called Artists4Ceasefire, she signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

In June 2026, Lopez stated her views on what makes someone a New Yorker and her view that you have to be born in New York to be a New Yorker. Lopez stated; “You live in New York. You take on characteristics of New Yorkers probably by that time. You have a New York sensibility. When you’re born in New York is when you’re really a New Yorker.” The statement generated controversy considering the fact that Lopez lives in Los Angeles and the fact that many New York City residents are immigrants or are from other parts of the US. The statements generated considerable criticism online.