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Introduction: She’s a rarity. One of the few Hollywood stars you can actually admire. And when you meet her she’s just as gorgeous, just as likeable, as she is on screen. I’m talking about J-Lo. Or for the uninitiated, Jennifer Lopez, a showbiz phenomenon who’s up there with Madonna.

J-Lo’s sold over 40 million albums, she’s been in more than 25 movies with leading men like George Clooney, Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson. And, she’s a merchandising marvel. Her name can sell just about anything. But then, a couple of years ago she just disappeared off the radar. Why? Well, stand by and we’ll reveal all.

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Transcript

RAY MARTIN: It’s not a 100 hangers-on as I’d been warned about but still when J.Lo walks the walk, she certainly ain’t just ‘Jenny from the block’. And despite two hours being primped and preened in private, the cosmetic SWAT team gives this seriously beautiful woman a final makeover. Those who need a bit of help — well, they miss out. Now my dilemma today is what do you give the Puerto Rican princess who’s got everything? A gift.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Thank you!

RAY MARTIN: A red rose for a lovely Latino lady.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: That’s so sweet, thank you so much.

RAY MARTIN: Now, you don’t have to put it in your teeth.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I don’t in my tooth or my hair? Okay, I won’t then. (Laughs)

RAY MARTIN: Jennifer, J.Lo, Jenny from the block …

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Yes.

RAY MARTIN: What … Ms Lopez, what would you like? What would you like me to call you?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: (Laughs) You can just call me Jennifer.

RAY MARTIN: Now, by whatever name, you’ve got to think that this 38-year-old icon could easily pass for 28. Jennifer, there was a story that I read once about you, you not liking J.Lo, that in fact you said it was meant to be fun — a fun name — and it, sort of, got out of hand?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Well, it just stuck. I never … You never expect the things that are gonna stick the way they do.

RAY MARTIN: Is it somebody else, Jennifer? Is J.Lo somebody else? Is that a stage person?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I think when you get on stage and you’re in all the costumes and the hair and the make-up and all the extra jewellery that you wouldn’t normally wear to the supermarket, let’s say, you know there is a definite image that, uh, goes along with it.

RAY MARTIN: But, on stage, that’s a performance?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Yes.

RAY MARTIN: Is that J.Lo on stage?

RAY MARTIN: Yes, yes.

RAY MARTIN: Okay.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Absolutely.

RAY MARTIN: J.Lo is a showbiz phenomenon, up there with Madonna — 40 million albums, 26 movies with Hollywood legends, and headlines that scream at you. In the bad old days it was often about her latest lover, from rap star Puff Daddy all the way to pin-up boy Ben Affleck. But as suddenly as she walked the red carpet with Marc Anthony, husband number three, J.Lo disappeared and changed her life. Where have you been? You’ve been off the front pages for 12 months or so.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: More than that.

RAY MARTIN: What have you been doing?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Um, I just really made a decision when I settled down and got married, like 3.5 years ago now, that it was hard on me and my family, to be under that type of scrutiny constantly, to be followed around, to feel like you have no privacy, you have no refuge.

RAY MARTIN: I think your husband Marc has said it’s like feeding the monster, feeding the creature, that if you actually give them food, they’ll eat it, eat you?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Yeah, well, they’ll come back for more.

RAY MARTIN: I mean it as a serious question but do you love being famous?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: No, it’s so funny, ’cause doing what I do and being famous are two different things. It’s like being famous is a by-product of what I do.

RAY MARTIN: Could you walk away from that fame?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I couldn’t walk away from making music or acting.

RAY MARTIN: Was there ridicule there? Did you think that you were starting to be a figure of fun publicly?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I think if you’re part of those tabloids that is exactly what you are.

RAY MARTIN: Well, the world saw exactly what she was when J.Lo almost wore that Versace dress to the Grammy awards. Do you see yourself as beautiful?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Um, I’m happy with myself, you know, I’m happy with myself. I don’t wake up every day and go, ‘Oh, aren’t you gorgeous?’ No, I don’t.

RAY MARTIN: What’s the worst part about you, your body?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Oh, God, I don’t know.

RAY MARTIN: That you’re prepared to tell me.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Um, I always thought my ankles were very skinny.

RAY MARTIN: Your ankles?

RAY MARTIN: Well, it’s not her skinny ankles but J.Lo’s pert posterior that’s become famous — just because. In an age of stringy, underfed models, Jennifer Lopez cashes in on her bumps and her body. Let’s then clear up some of the other stuff.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Okay.

RAY MARTIN: Is your bottom insured for $100,000?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: No, you actually have the figures wrong.

RAY MARTIN: $100 million is it?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: No, it was $1 billion, actually, but it was … all of it was a lie and absurd.

RAY MARTIN: When did your posterior become public property?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Um, I think it was one of my very first interviews and, uh, I made a comment about it and all of a sudden like, much like J.Lo, you know, people kind of thought that was funny and grabbed on, uh, to the whole idea of that and …

RAY MARTIN: Are you happy about your bottom?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Um, I’m very happy with myself, let’s just put it that way. It’s very strange for you, a grown man, to be asking me about that, a married woman, it sounds just weird to me.

RAY MARTIN: Well, weird as it may sound, J.Lo exploits her curvaceous bottom in everything she does. Just like she parades her Puerto Rican past. The Bronx in New York City has become a Puerto Rican world — a magnet for 44 million Spanish-speaking Americans like J.Lo.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: They have all this Bronx attitude, and you just see yourself. It’s not just that was me — that is me. They will be me one day.

RAY MARTIN: And the Bronx is notorious for poverty and crime. It’s famous as the home of rap music, of break dancing and Jennifer — Jenny from the block who reached for the sky. Now this is the block where Jenny grew up. It’s a middle-class part of the Bronx but a long way from the luxury that she’s got today. And this was the family house. She has lived the great American dream — a Puerto Rican kid with a tough work ethic and no apologies.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I kind of mix it together, you know, this glamour and this grit and that’s who I am. You know, nobody from our neighbourhood was in show business and I just didn’t think they could fathom that I could make my way in.

RAY MARTIN: What drove you? What made you do it?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I just loved it.

RAY MARTIN: Did you have any doubts that you wouldn’t do it, you wouldn’t make it?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I’d never thought about it. I mean it was … it was something that I really, really loved and wanted to do.

RAY MARTIN: After LA and Miami, Jennifer Lopez these days lives out amongst the mansions on nearby Long Island. The kid from the Bronx even makes movies with Robert Redford.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: For my mum. When I grew up, Robert Redford … ‘Oh, he’s the most gorgeous man in the whole entire world’. She came to the set, the whole thing. I was, like, ‘Please, Ma, just act normal’. You know?

RAY MARTIN: Do you pinch yourself?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: It’s crazy. It’s absolutely surreal, you know, that I’ve got into work with all these people you know. Even, like, my mum — like I didn’t even make it until I worked with Robert Redford.

RAY MARTIN: As well as Redford, she’s co-starred with a bevy of Hollywood’s top blokes and taught them to dance including Richard Gere, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robin Williams, as well as her monster mother-in-law Jane Fonda. What did you learn from Jane Fonda?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Commitment.

RAY MARTIN: Commitment?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: In a scene. Um, not really caring about what anybody’s gonna think or how crazy people are gonna look at you.

RAY MARTIN: And then there was George Clooney. Is he as sexy off camera as he is on?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: He’s a very, very charming man — very charming, very down to earth as well.

RAY MARTIN: How’d you go?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I did good.

RAY MARTIN: You did good?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: I did good.

RAY MARTIN: At 38, J.Lo’s career is on fire. She’s got two new movies and last night was the opening show of — believe it or not — her first ever concert tour, as it happens, with husband Marc Anthony.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Actually, it was so funny because Mark is a veteran but he was more nervous for me than he’s ever been at any one of his concerts.

RAY MARTIN: And there’s her new album, called Brave, which she says reflects her love life right now. So love now is bright, turn on the lights, is it? J

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Yeah, it’s good, it’s good. It’s come out of a storm into a really, uh, good place, you know.

RAY MARTIN: And you’re dancing again, as said in the album.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Yeah.

RAY MARTIN: Could you teach me to tango?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: No! (Laughs) No, no, but I can find somebody who could.

RAY MARTIN: You’re not that good?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: No, no. I have people teach me. I don’t teach others.

RAY MARTIN: Beyond a teacher, Jennifer Lopez moves like a natural-born dance machine. With the energy of a teenager, she admits the body clock is ticking, that she worries about getting old.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Sure, I mean, I’m a woman, yeah, just like anybody. You know, you’re like what’s it gonna be like? I mean it’s a scary think, I think.

RAY MARTIN: Plastic surgery, nips and tucks — would you think of that?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: God, you know, I would never pass judgment on anybody for anything. I don’t know that when I get to 50, I’m like, ‘I can’t deal with this’, you know, I don’t know, so, uh, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

RAY MARTIN: Last week, when we met J.Lo, the rumours of her pregnancy were just that … rumours. And my innocent question about multiple births was just that too — innocent. I haven’t left it till last, but I have to ask you, are you having triplets?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: What?

RAY MARTIN: Are you pregnant?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: (Laughs) If I was, I wouldn’t discuss it anyway. JENNIFER LOPEZ: No, sorry.

RAY MARTIN: None of my business, none of my business. Okay, but check out the loose clothing, how she looks, even the way she sits down for our interview, and it’s a safe bet that this sparkling lady is pregnant. Somebody once wrote about you that, ‘She is so bright, she’s so luminescent that when she leaves the room, it’s as if somebody has turned off the lights’.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Oh.

RAY MARTIN: That’s a lot of power.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Who’s that? My husband say that?

RAY MARTIN: (Laughs) No.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: He better have.

RAY MARTIN: I’m gonna try and check this out. So I thank you for talking to me and I’ll let you go and see if the lights go out.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: We’ll see. So everybody ready?

RAY MARTIN: You haven’t even gone.

JENNIFER LOPEZ: That was too quick! No, that was the wrong cue!