The Woman
Jennifer Lopez is back on television with her new NBC series, Shades of Blue, and it appears to be a role the always surprising star was made for.
Born July 24, 1969, in the Bronx, New York, Lopez began her career as a dancer, appearing in stage musicals and various music videos. In 1990, she won a national competition and earned a spot dancing on the popular Fox comedy television series, In Living Color, as one of the “Fly Girls.”
Lopez received her first professional acting gig in the direct-to-video drama film Lost in the Wild (1993), co-starring alongside Lindsay Wagner and Robert Loggia. Later in 1993 Lopez signed a deal with CBS to co-star in the television series Second Chances. The show was cancelled after airing only six episodes when the 1994 Northridge earthquake destroyed its set.
Lopez’s first big break came in 1997, when she was chosen to play the title role in Selena, a biopic of the Tejano pop singer Selena Quintillana Perez, who was killed by the founder of the Selena fan club Yolanda Saldivar in 1995. Lopez earned widespread praise for her performance, including a Golden Globe nomination
At the wrap party for Selena, Ojani Noa, a waiter at a Miami restaurant, grabbed the microphone and offered a Lopez a diamond ring in the middle of the dance floor. Lopez accepted and the pair married the same year but were divorced by January 1998. The relationship between the two remained amicable after their split, but Lopez eventually sued Noa in a bid to prevent him from publishing a book containing personal details of their marriage.
While working on her first album On the 6, Lopez began dating record producer and rapper Sean Combs. On December 27, 1999, the couple were arrested along with two others in connection with a shooting outside the Times Square Club in New York. They were charged with criminal possession of a weapon as well as stolen property. Lopez was soon exonerated, having had nothing to do with the crime. Needless to say, the hype and stress surrounding the drama would fizzle the romance and Lopez split from Combs a year later.
After leaving Combs, Lopez developed a relationship with former back-up dancer Cris Judd, whom she was married to from September 29, 2001 to June 2002. Following her second divorce, she commenced a high-profile relationship with actor and director Ben Affleck, whom she became engaged to in November 2002.The media began to refer to them as “Bennifer,” and they became a prominent super-couple in the media and popular culture. The couple postponed their nuptials indefinitely a day prior to the planned ceremony in September 2003, citing the media’s interference with the event as the reason.
Lopez hit the headlines once again in 2004 when she secretly married salsa star Marc Anthony. They had briefly dated in the late 1990s, before his first marriage and her second, and unlike the challenges of both their previous marriages, the two remained together and announced in November 2007 that they were expecting their first child together (later confirmed to be twins).
On screen, Lopez starred in the hit comedy ‘Monster-In-Law’, and more recently in ‘El Cantante,’ a biopic of Hector Lavoe, the salsa pioneer who helped to break the genre in America. Lopez’s husband starred as Lavoe, with Lopez as his wife Nilda Rosado. Her latest roles have been in ‘Parker’ (2013), ‘Home’ (2015) and ‘Lila & Eve’ (2015).
She can currently be seen on NBC’s Shades of Blue, co-starring Ray Liotta. The story is set in New York City. Jennifer plays the show’s main character, Harlee Santos,a single-mother NYPD detective, who is forced to work in the FBI’s anti-corruption task force, while dealing with her own financial problems.
Lopez loves working on the show and feels a great sense of pride with the diversity of its cast. Watch a trailer here:
Her Cause
The Lopez Family Foundation. Co-founded by Jennifer and her younger sister Lynda Lopez, The Lopez Family Foundation advocates and invests in policies and programs that make a positive, measurable impact on communities and makes quality healthcare and health education available for underserved mothers and their children. The Lopez Family Foundation opened its first telemedicine center in Puerto Rico in 2010 and has recently opened seven new centers in Panama.
Lopez also regularly donates to the American Foundation for AIDS Research, Amnesty International, City of Hope, and the March of Dimes
