Jennifer Lopez

Few knew what to make of Jennifer Lopez when she began making waves in the entertainment industry. Carelessly classified alongside Gloria Estefan as a successful Latina crossover star, industry pundits granted Lopez’s star far less wattage than the facts as we have them now would dictate. The buzz was growing following Jennifer Lopez’s appearance in the highly popular Money Train, starring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

Working with a screen resume consisting mainly of her status as a fly girl on “In Living Color” Lopez’s performance as the titular character in the biopic of tragically murdered and widely celebrated Latin pop sensation Selena. Jennifer Lopez’s sensitive portrayal of this woman helped the film deliver a complicated, realistic view of the singer’s life and brought emotional gravitas to the woman behind the star who sat at the center of a complicated web of betrayal.

Although before Selena’s arrival Lopez had already appeared with such fixtures as Diane Lane, Robin Williams, and Bill Cosby in the surreal Williams vehicle Jack in 1996, her star turn in Selena gained her a lot of ground in the industry. Her roles since then have ranged from nerve-of-steel detectives in sci-fi potboilers such as The Cell to more commonplace roles such as in Maid in Manhattan or The Wedding Planner.

With critics always eager to lump Jennifer Lopez in with other, less talented performers, she has become known as a “triple threat” meaning she is capable of singing, acting and dancing. “Jenny from the Block” has done as much as she can to put her rough and tumble child hood beside her, and the same survival instinct that drove her away from Brooklyn drove her to her work as her much-publicized relationship with Ben Affleck collapsed. Amidst the turmoil, Lopez wowed audiences with her toe-to-toe work with Morgan Freeman and Robert Redford in An Unfinished Life, and shot to the top of the pop charts with her spicy hit “Get Right.”