Jennifer Lopez is a global icon who has earned a place at the top of the industry for her discipline and tireless perseverance. She has had to row against the tide to be seen, valued, and heard even at the height of her success, a struggle that she addresses throughout her documentary Halftime, in which she shows her most vulnerable side while exposing decades of work and sacrifices.

And it is that in addition to sharing the details of the preparation behind her musical performance with Shakira in the 2020 Super Bowl, the star of Latin origin has opened her heart to talk about how painful it was for her not to have been nominated for the Oscars despite the fact that critics considered her one of the favorites to win the golden statuette, an episode that made her rethink her purpose and work as an artist.

The singer recalled the excitement she experienced while filming Hustlers because her character as Ramona was not only inspiring, it reminded her of the strong women she grew up with in the Bronx neighborhood of New York. The film “was raw, it had substance”, a project that she said she always sought in her career and that allowed her to explore her facet as a producer: “One of my goals is to make entertaining films, but ones that also have a message.”

One of the challenges she took on with the role was learning pole dance, a skill that forced her to undergo intensive and painful training, of which a few minutes can be seen in her documentary, where JLo reveals the physical damage she suffered during the essays. The actress has assured that she was putting a lot at stake: “it was a controversial project and a risky role for me”.

Hustlers earned her a Golden Globe nomination in the category of Best Supporting Actress, an award that was finally given to Laura Dern. Losing that award meant a bitter pill for Lopez. “I thought I had a chance, I felt I had let everyone down. They wanted so much for her to win for me, for them. It would be a validation of all the work they do, ”she said, referring to the team of managers and assistants who have accompanied her since she filmed Selena, the biopic about The Queen of Tex-Mex.

The second blow came with the announcement of the Oscar nominations, from which she was left out despite the fact that the reviews of her performance were mostly positive and she thought that marked her as a worthy contender for the award. “The truth is that I had begun to believe that they were going to nominate me.

I got excited because many people told me that they would nominate me and then it didn’t happen. And I had to wonder what that means. I’m not doing this for an award or to sing my hits up there and feel like the best artist in the world. I do it to tell stories. To create change, connect with people and make them feel things because I want to feel something, that’s why I do it. Because I want to collaborate a little to make the world a better place, ”she mentioned.

However, she did not give up and adopted her own life lesson: “’no’ is not an answer, it is an opportunity”. That path led her to recognize her triumphs, as she stated near the end of her documentary: “I am a 50-year-old actress who had her greatest success playing a stripper, a woman who accepts the power of her sexuality and takes advantage of the way they objectify women.”

Her life in the Bronx and the American dream

Since she was a child, JLo showed her interest in singing, dancing, and acting, hence her taste for musicals; however, her love for dancing drove her away from school, which led to an estrangement from her. “It completely distracted me from school, my mom used to say: ‘if you want to live here, you should study. One night we had a big fight and I just left, ”recalled the singer, who was then 18 years old when she left the family nest. “I lived like a gypsy since I left my mom’s house.”

The actress has also had to face a cultural barrier and an industry in which Latinos must constantly defend their rights. “Because we were from a Latino community and we had nothing, we had to try harder than a normal person. We had to work harder, prove our worth over and over again”, she points out in one of the scenes of the documentary.