Jennifer Lopez proved she’s not just a multi-faceted entertainer in reflecting back on her high school track days.
On the Wednesday, October 8 episode of Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang’s “Las Culturistas” podcast, Lopez, 56, surprised listeners in revealing some of her athletic accomplishments.
“I started track when I was in 5th or 6th grade,” she recalled. “My best mile ever was, I think 4:49 — I was for real.”
Lopez said she focused on middle-distance events like the 800m and 1,500m, adding, “There were times in my life where I thought I would take the athlete [route]. I was an athlete — like a little tomboy jock person.”
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The conversation with Yang, 34, and Rogers, 35, soon turned from track meets to love stories. When asked about her famous on-screen chemistry, Lopez laughed and admitted, “I can fall in love with anybody.”
“That’s the bad quote from here,” she said. “But no, my point is I feel like I don’t know if it’s because I’m a romantic and I so believe in love.”
Rogers praised Lopez for her ability to connect “with so many different kinds of leading men,” from Matthew McConaughey in The Wedding Planner to Ralph Fiennes in Maid in Manhattan. Lopez agreed, saying her secret lies in seeing the person behind the character.
“I’m able to have that chemistry with people and with all different kinds of people,” she said. “I’m able to kind of see through this and get to who is the person on the inside and really fall in love with that person in that moment, like they say, in between action and cut.”
Lopez’s new film, a movie adaptation of the stage musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, gave her a chance to explore that same theme.
“It’s only about love for me,” she told the hosts. “It’s funny because I identified most not with the Spider Woman, not with Aurora, even though there were parts of me that I feel were very much like each of those characters … but Ingrid Luna was the most like me because she’s an entertainer.”
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Reflecting on one of her favorite scenes, Lopez described the musical number “Where You Are,” where her character invites another to escape through song.
“That’s where I say to him, ‘Come with me. Let’s escape together. Let’s escape into this song, let’s escape into this movie, let’s escape into this world. Forget you’re in a prison, don’t be where you are. Be with me, let’s go have fun,’” she shared. “I can’t tell you how many times in my own life I have had someone come up to me and say, ‘This song got me through this’ or ‘this movie made me dream and want to do what I’m doing today.’”
Lopez added,“The more I keep going, they keep going. When they see me fall down and they see me get back up. But what they don’t realize, and what I love about the movie and I love about that number, is that he saves her, too.”
Kiss of the Spider Woman hits theaters on Friday, October 10.
