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Tuesday, March 21, 2000 Lopez, Carey to film here Divas hit town in spring, late summer By BOB THOMPSON -- Toronto Sun Expect a bodyguard shortage when major attractions Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey head our way to do films in Toronto. Both are the famous kind who need no introduction, but want to be kept far from the maddening crowds. Lopez, the Latin beauty who wore the un-dress at the Grammys, should be here by early May to start shooting the romantic thriller, Angel Eyes. The other darling diva, Carey, is scheduled to arrive later in the summer to begin her redefinition of the often-made A Star Is Born. Lopez, these days, takes the security cake, since her involvement with Puff Daddy put her in the intense paparazzi zone. And she gets staked out by shutter bugs more than ever, post-Grammys. You never know when she'll be wearing another undress again. Carey's media swarm factor is right up there, too. At least Lopez will be happy in a rich kind of way when she's here. She's getting a record $7.5 million for her Angel Eyes' cop role. Ironically, Lopez was considering A Star Is Born as a vehicle for her talents, but passed. That left the part open to Carey, who jumped at the chance. Meanwhile, Carey will sing for her supper at the Air Canada Centre April 7. Tuesday, Dec 6 , 1999 Lopez insures body for $1 billion Does Jennifer Lopez have a billion dollar butt? The word from the star herself is no. Jennifer Lopez denied the The New York Post's story that she'd insured her body for $1 billion, BBC reported. "I don't know where they got it from," Lopez said Monday. "When I heard the story I thought it was very funny." The Post's original article cited the London tabloid The Sun, saying Lopez insured her body, including her famous derriere, for $1 billion. Each of her body parts were supposedly insured for different amounts including $200 million for her breasts, $300 million for her legs and backside and $50 million for her hair. "She doesn't want to take a chance with her mega-bucks modelling, acting and singing career," the paper said. The New York Post added to the report, saying Lopez's agents insisted she take out the insurance. "She is the hottest woman in showbiz at the moment ... and she wants the reassurance that if something goes wrong she will be well-covered. She travels around the world all the time and does a lot of her own stunts in films, and she's very conscious of something going wrong," the Post quoted an insider. Although Lopez denies reports that she's insured her body, she wouldn't be the first screen siren or music star to do so. Betty Grable insured her legs for a million dollars and Bruce Springsteen insured his voice for six million dollars. Lopez, whose debut album "On The 6" has topped the charts, recently received an $8 million payday for the film 'Angel Eyes." -- JAM! Movies Wednesday December 1, 1999 Lopez signs $7.5 mil deal Jennifer Lopez's payday just made a big jump with the announcement of her next film, the romantic thriller "Angel Eyes." Variety says the actress -- who started her career as a "flygirl" dancer on the comedy series "In Living Color," and was paid $2 million to star alongside George Clooney in "Out Of Sight" -- will be paid $7.5 million for "Angel Eyes." Lopez will star as a female cop with a history of sexual abuse who befriends a man trying to deal with the death of his wife and son. Luis Mandoki and Gerard DiPego, the team that directed and wrote "Message In A Bottle," will reunite for "Angel Eyes". The movie has a $30 million budget and is set to start filming in the spring, Variety said. -- JAM! Movies Wednesday June 25, 1999 Lopez offered $5M for Angel Eyes NEW YORK -- Jennifer Lopez has just been offered $5 million for the lead in the Warner movie Angel Eyes. Variety says the studio also thinks she could be a match for Will Smith in the remake of A Star Is Born, a move that would capitalize on her singing career. Her Sony album, On The 6, debuted at No. 8 two weeks ago. She will also star in the sci-fi film The Cell, and is negotiating for the title role in The Wedding Planner for director Adam Schenkman, and has also been in discussions to co-star with Eddie Murphy in Pluto Nash, the action comedy set on the moon, to film early next year. Angel Eyes is a drama in which Lopez would play a cop reeling from the effects of an abusive childhood. She forms a healing bond with a man who has been traumatized since watching his son and wife die in a car crash. - Toronto Sun Thursday July 9, 1998, 1999 Lopez answers call to stardom Spotlight's on Out Of Sight star By BOB THOMPSON -- Toronto Sun HOLLYWOOD -- She tried to be a star in the nicest way possible, but Jennifer Lopez might be losing some of her niceness lustre. Witness a recent poolside scene at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel. Resplendent in an expensive swimsuit and fashionable sunglasses, Lopez is stretched out on a chaise lounge. She has a cellphone to her ear, and she's speaking Spanish loudly and clearly into the latest battery-operated Motorola Star Tac. Lopez is not pleased, apparently. She is so not pleased that her harsh telephone manner makes some nearby turn toward her. When the 28-year-old ends her phone conversation abruptly, life poolside resumes. Vanity sunbathers assume their previous posed positions. Lopez settles in, as well, and slowly simmers under the California sun, a little less anonymous than she was when she first arrived. Indeed, it's been a very grueling Lopez year, personally. Her marriage to Miami waiter Ojani Noa is presumably on the rocks after less than 18 months of not-so-heavenly matrimony. Gossip pages have written about her dating boxer Oscar de la Hoya, and getting cozy with Sony Music boss Tommy Mottola. There have even been reports of her arguing in public with her new husband. She continues to deny eveything, or continues to be in denial. On the professional front, however, things couldn't be better. Lopez is getting great notices for her version of the tough U.S. marshal in Out Of Sight opposite George Clooney. She's fondly remembered for a fine Selena portrayal, and as the frisky scene stealer in Money Train. Some said Lopez was the only reasonable one in the over-the-top Anaconda. For fun, she's the lead voice in Antz, a fall animation film also starring Sharon Stone, Woody Allen and Sylvester Stallone. She has an album to release early next year and a film to produce months afterward called Tango, which centres on intrigue and that popular Argentinian dance. Lopez is definitely living in an ambivalent world. So the morning after her terse poolside incident, Lopez bursts into a Four Seasons Hotel room full of reporters looking as spunky and sexy as ever. She also happens to be trailed by a personal publicist, who takes a seat directly behind Lopez. When the publicist isn't hovering, she's yawning as Lopez fields questions about her career, and how she's changed from her rookie days as a Fly Girl on the syndicated comedy show In Living Color. "I'm still the same. I'm a workaholic. I get anxious when I don't have something to do," says a perky Lopez. "And I'm a little older." And richer. "But money doesn't run my existence. Even when I was poor, I didn't worry about money." Instead, there is the pressure of maintaining what she has. "The pressure is worse now than then," confirms Lopez. "It always seemed like a struggle. Now I struggle to figure out what to do next, to keep it going." That's professionally. Personally, she's officially entered the no-comment zone. Saturday, June 20, 1998 Lopez is it Sexy actress has that special something By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun HOLLYWOOD -- Jennifer Lopez wants to be Hollywood's next IT girl. Back in the Roaring '20s, Clara Bow was dubbed the IT girl because she had something special that set her apart from the other stars of the day. "I call it WOW," explains Lopez, the star of Selena, Anaconda, U-Turn and the George Clooney caper movie Out of Sight, which opens Friday. "It's all about being alive, open, electric and confident. If you have the goods, there's nothing to be afraid of. If somebody doesn't have the goods, they're insecure. "I don't have that problem. I'm not the best actress that ever lived, but I know I'm pretty good." Lopez, 27, knew from an early age that she was special. She was born and raised in New York's tough Bronx district. By her own admission, she "had a pretty voluptuous body from the time I was 11, but I also had a dream. I was going to be a performer." She sang and danced in school productions and, in 1991, was cast as one of the Fly Girls on TV's In Living Color. She quickly stepped out of the chorus line to star in such TV series as Second Chances, South Central and Hotel Malibu, playing a series of seductresses. Then came supporting roles in feature films such as My Family, Money Train, Jack and Blood and Wine. She was still just a face among faces until she played the doomed singer in Selena and the heroine in Anaconda. "Lots of people laughed when I chose to do Anaconda, but it made more than $100 million, so I had the last laugh." Lopez insists she had even more chemistry with her latest non-reptilian leading man, Clooney. "It was George and my idea to turn the seduction scene in Out of Sight into a striptease. "The sex scenes in Out of Sight (including another in a bathtub) are the first time in ages that you see more of the man than the woman." Lopez says she's confident that she can be sexy without having to disrobe. "I grew up watching real movie stars like Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. They knew what was sexy. It was because of them that I wanted to be a movie actress." Celebrity has its down-side. Lopez's life is now under the media microscope. Ojani Noa, the former Cuban model and bartender Lopez married last year, confirmed she asked for a quick divorce two months ago. He is still managing L.A.'s trendy Cuban Lounge, the bar Lopez bought for him as a wedding present. Lopez has been linked with Mariah Carey's former husband, record producer Tommy Mottola, and rapper Sean Puff Daddy. "Every time I'm photographed talking to someone, it's construed as a date," Lopez says. "I've learned that I can't control what's written about my private life. The only thing I can control is my work on the screen. "I refuse to be a recluse, so I have to content myself with the knowledge that many more untruths are going to be written about me." Lopez's next movie will be Thieves from Gary Fleder, the director of Kiss the Girls. "Right now though, I'm working on an album. It's going to be pop, dance and street music all with a definite Latin influence." Monday, June 8,1998 Jennifer Lopez lies low Letting her publicist do the talking By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun HOLLYWOOD -- Rumors abound that Jennifer Lopez's year-old marriage is on the rocks. The sultry Lopez met Cuban model Ojnai Noa in a Miami bar and married him after a whirlwind affair. Lopez has been spotted recently with music producer Tommy Mottola and rapper Puff Daddy, but the actress will not admit or deny anything. "I was too open and honest about my private life in the past and I've been hurt as a result," insists Lopez. In fact, she now travels to interviews with her publicist, who blocks all personal questions with the pronouncement that "Jennifer doesn't answer those kind of questions any more." Lopez laments that she never thought the press would hound her once she got famous. "I thought I was too ordinary and too open for the paparazzi to care about me, but now the supermarket publications are all over me." Sunday, October 5, 1997 Lopez takes the heat By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun HOLLYWOOD -- Jennifer Lopez's reel life is impacting a bit too much on her real life. Four years ago, Lopez was just one of the Fly Girl dancers on TV's In Living Color. Now she's one of Hollywood's most popular starlets. In the past 18 months alone, Lopez has starred in Blood and Wine, Anaconda and Selena, and is one of the stars of Oliver Stone's U-Turn. She has signed to star opposite George Clooney in the thriller Out of Sight that begins filming next month. "Selena was a big movie for me. Kids loved the movie and they introduced it to their parents and grandparents. Suddenly I was being recognized everywhere," explains Lopez. "I love being popular and noticed. That's part of the whole celebrity thing ... as long as it's the truth. "Now there are all these ridiculous stories being printed about me and it's hard on my family. I get these panic phone calls from my grandmother and my father." The latest predicament occurred last month. Just weeks before the release of Selena last year, Lopez married Ojani Noa, a Cuban waiter she'd met in Miami. Now there are reports about a public break-up. "The papers said Ojani and I had a fight in the restaurant at the Le Mondrian hotel in Los Angeles. They said he threw plates and cutlery on the floor and stormed out, leaving me alone and crying." Lopez says what actually happened was that her husband couldn't find anything he liked on the menu and excused himself from a meeting she was having with her agent. "Ojani and I had a laugh about the stories, but then when we went to Miami the next week, the paparazzi followed us everywhere, hoping to get a picture of us fighting in public. "My father phone and asked me to tell Ojani not to yell at me in public. I should have called my father and explained everything before he read it in a newspaper." Lopez says she will now have regular conferences with her family, and not just when one of her films is about to be released. "I tell my family if I'm going to be naked in the film or have a sex scene or if I'm going to kill anyone. They don't want to be surprised when they come to my movies." Lopez will have a lot of explaining to do over her role in U-Turn. She plays the cheating wife of the town's richest man (Nick Nolte). When a young stranger (Sean Penn) arrives in town, she seduces him and then asks him to kill her husband. "There is a lot of sex and violence in U-Turn, but it is all justified by the plot. I knew I'd be doing several sex scenes but (director) Oliver Stone said there would be no nudity." That all changed one day when Stone came to Lopez's trailer and asked if she'd do a nude scene. "When I objected, Oliver reminded me that I'd done a nude scene for Blood and Wine, but I reminded him it got cut out. "We talked for a long while before I agreed to do the nudity. Jennifer the actress has nothing against nudity, but Jennifer the person really hates it. The actress always wins out by reminding me this is what I'm paid to do." Lopez says she learned early that to succeed in Hollywood, she could not be easily intimidated. "I just tell myself that the director will like me and like my work and then I pray it works out that way." She is proud to say she has yet to have a director or co-star proposition her. "I know many actresses who've had that happen to them, but I don't give off the vibe that I'll sleep with them. That ultimately gets their respect." Wednesday, October 1, 1997 Jennifer Lopez stays humble U-Turn star a straight shooter By BOB THOMPSON Toronto Sun HOLLYWOOD -- More enthusiasm than ego, more confidence than calculation, the casual but vivacious Jennifer Lopez is still in a state of wonder. She's finishing up a film year that is turning her peers green with envy and her bank account green with money. She co-starred with Jack Nicholson in Blood And Wine, she received raves as Selena, and she was forgiven her involvement in Anaconda, the silly Amazon adventure yarn. In Oliver Stone's U-Turn, opening Friday, Lopez plays a sexy smalltown manipulator who plots her escape from an abusive marriage. Based on John Ridley's novel Stray Dogs, the film stars Sean Penn, and highlights such illustrious talents as Nick Nolte, Billy Bob Thornton, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix and Jon Voight. Yet it is Lopez who drives Stone's movie vision, which combines dark comedy with thriller melodrama. It is also Lopez who gets hot and heavy during some of the sex scenes. "I hope," says Lopez recently, "I never have to do it again." That was the daughter and wife in Lopez talking, but she knows the actor in her rises to the occasion if she has to. "I always warn my parents, though," she says of controversial movie moments she's endured. Indeed, signing on to star in U-Turn came with some beware qualifications. Yes, the former In Living Color dancer was issued her very own warning. Beware of the mean-spirited Stone. "I can't be intimidated," Lopez asserts. "I thought to myself, 'Hell, he'll like me.' "I come in prepared, and that gains respect. And I don't give off the vibe that the director can sleep with me at any moment, and I get respect for that, too." Lopez might not have to issue a parental advisory, or receive any preparatory guidelines, in her next movie, the film version of Elmore Leonard's Out Of Sight, also starring George Clooney. "I'm a federal marshal raised by my dad," she says of the straightforward cops 'n' robbers picture fans will get to see next year. In the meantime, Lopez is doing some U-Turn promotion, then taking a well-deserved break from the work treadmill and the publicity glare. Surprisingly, Lopez has managed to survive both mostly unscathed. She figures that has a lot to do with her honesty during media interviews, expecially on TV. She did, however, get worked over briefly last winter by trashy media gossip about fighting with her new husband, Ojani Noa. "That was back in February. They had him throwing plates at me, all this untrue retarded stuff that hurt." It blew over, and even the upfront Lopez admits that speaking her mind in interviews helped her get the Lopez truth out. "I come across very bubbly," says the 27-year-old Bronx-born Puerto Rican, "and I have a very funny personality, and I consider myself humble. "People don't want actors to be too arrogant or sure of themselves. "I don't have a huge ego. I'm just a regular kind of girl doing good." Sunday, March 16, 1997 Fallen star Jennifer Lopez thinks about what could have been in Selena By NATASHA STOYNOFF -- Toronto Sun NEW YORK -- Jennifer Lopez is tired of sitting on her butt. Like the title character in her latest film, Selena -- about the vivacious, voluptuous 23-year-old Mexican-American singer murdered two years ago -- Lopez is ready to get off and show her Latina genes. "One of Selena's huge appeals," says the self-confessed "hip-heavy" actress, who dons the singer's signature hip-hugging outfits in the film, "is that she was herself and didn't try to hide that. She was dark, she wore red lipstick and she had a nice-sized butt. She showed what she had and women could look at her and say, `Hey, my body is just like that!'" But Selena Quintanilla Perez broke barriers deeper than just skin deep. Killed by a former employee while her much-anticipated "crossover" English-singing album was in the works, the Grammy-winner, dubbed the Queen of Tejano Music, was also the first woman to gain success in that male-dominated field. Facing similar racial/gender struggles in the acting world, Lopez, 27, identifies. "Though I'm Puerto Rican from the Bronx and she was a Mexican in Texas we've both been treated the same way as minorities and as women," says Lopez, who felt the lack of role models in movies growing up. "There weren't any I could identify with," she says, "except for West Side Story. I loved that film. I identified with Rita Moreno." In the big picture, says Latino director/writer Gregory Nava, the film is the story of someone of their kind who "was accepted and that's what we all want." "Every Mexican American has a vested interest in her career," says Nava. Even making the film about her life, says Lopez, just one of several Latina cast and crew members involved in the project, is "most important for the Latin community. If it does well, it shows we can make great movies." The race card was almost pulled on Lopez after it was announced at a press conference that she won the role following an intensive two-month search. That she wasn't Mexican disturbed fans at first, says co-producer Robert Katz, but "it was never an issue for us." With help from Selena's still-mourning family, who had script approval, the cast shot for four months around the singer's hometown of Corpus Christi. The story begins with "a poor girl with a dream," says Lopez, of the film's 15-year time span and ends with "a validation that the American Dream is still alive." Hesitant at first that it was destined to be a movie-of-the-week style sensation, co-producer Moctesuma Esparza resisted Selena's story until his 15-year-old daughter, a Selena wannabe, pestered until he gave in. "She showed me videos and talked about her," says Esparza, "and I realized it was really a story about a family who struggled a long time and came to realize their dream." Portraying Selena's father, a frustrated musician who tried to overcome race barriers decades earlier, Edward James Olmos says working closely with family members, and the fact that he had met the singer only months before she died, made it "emotionally, the hardest movie I ever made." "She was so unpretentious," says Olmos, who gained 60 pounds to play the role of her father, Abraham Quintanilla Jr. who is executive producer of Selena. "I can only compare the loss to that of James Dean," says the actor. "We'll never know all that she would have given us." Working alongside relatives at the shoot, "We'd be on set, look up, and the family would be in tears," says Lopez, who became a kind of surrogate Selena to the protective family. "Selena's mother would look out for me. She'd say: `You haven't eaten anything! You haven't drank any water! You're just like Selena." It felt that way, at least, when Lopez filmed a concert sequence at San Antonio's Astrodome in front of 35,000 frenzied fans, rekindling her own singing and dancing ambitions. "I almost forgot how much I love to perform on stage," says Lopez. "There's nothing like singing in front of an audience. When we finished, I called up my agent and said: `I gotta record something!'" (She plans to record later this year.) Similarities between the actress and the singer don't stop there, admits Lopez. While Selena began singing as a child spurred by her music-loving dad, Lopez began dancing lessons at age five thanks to "my mother, a frustrated actress." Both share "big hearts" and a rebellious streak, Lopez says -- a character trait highlighted in the film. "We didn't want to make her into a sanctified, perfect person who did everything her dad told her to do," says director Nava. One aspect not detailed in the film, however, is the actual hotel-room murder. "We wanted to focus on her life, not her death," Nava says. The final sequence, instead, is a smiling montage of the real Selena and a candlelight vigil by fans. The images drew hoots and applause from test audiences, many of Latino descent, in New York and Los Angeles last week. But whether the film will be able to cross over to a wider audience, as Selena's music did, is the challenge. "We don't need it," says Olmos. "There are enough Latinos in the Western Hemisphere to take care of this movie a hundred times over." The filmmakers already got one heartfelt review from Selena's father who saw a rough cut of the final version in an editing room weeks ago. "He was crying," says Katz. "He got up and gave us all a big hug." Lopez, too, has a certain sense of a job well done. "I'm a spiritual person," she says. "I believe in God and I believe Selena is in Heaven. I think she is watching over us." THE SELENA FILE ON GIVING AUTOGRAPHS: "I use Selena as an example," says Lopez. "The way she handled the public was always very gracious." THE DANGERS OF FAME: "There's always that fear," says Lopez. "But you can't stop living because of it." THE NON-DIET DIET: "I ate a lot and exercised nothing," says Olmos, of his weight gain for the role. "Losing it wasn't as much fun." ON THE AMERICAN DREAM: "It means the American Tragedy," says Olmos, "that's the sadness of our society." Thursday, February 20, 1997 A very good year for wine star Blood and Wine's Jennifer Lopez goes from Jack Nicholson to Oliver Stone By BOB THOMPSON -- Toronto Sun HOLLYWOOD -- The second Jennifer Lopez walks into the room, it gets electric. But her postively overwhelming charge comes more from her vitality than her veneer. Mind you, Lopez is wearing a form fitting cotton-and-lycra dress with a revealing low-cut design. And she's not shy about the look or exploiting the get-up for a quick laugh. "Yeah, nice dress, but it's not bra friendly," she says tugging at her dress' scooped front as she plops herself on a chair. "Where do you want to start?" she adds grinning. What about with who is Jennifer Lopez, and why is she the highest paid Latin actor working in movies today? The first part is easy. The 27-year-old Lopez is a Bronx-born Puerto Rican, who earned her high-profile showbiz start as a Fly Girl dancer on TV's In Living Color. Well-received secondary roles in My Family, Jack and Money Train followed. But the best is yet to come. She plays opposite Jack Nicholson in Blood And Wine, which opens tomorrow. Next month she'll be seen as Selena, and later in the year Lopez is featured in the Amazon adventure story, Anaconda. Currently she's shooting the Oliver Stone film, U-Turn. Big year. "Let's hope," says Lopez smiling, "but don't jinx me." Not possible, they say. That's why Lopez is making a whopping $1 million a picture, more than other Latins who have had more hits and been in the business twice as long. "Yeah, isn't that sad?" she says. She doesn't have a great deal of time to worry about the pay scale inequities, however. But she does pause to consider her charmed showbiz life. That's from impressing Nicholson to winning the Selena sweepstakes after all the A and B list actresses went after the role of the Latin singer shot and killed two years ago by the president of her fan club. "I think Selena really got my name out there," admits Lopez, "but Jennifer Lopez didn't do a bad job of that either." For instance, she recalls that Money Train's Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson were skewered for their performances, "but I was the only one who came out smelling like a rose, baby." The fact that Nicholson chose her for Blood And Wine aided her profile. In the Bob Rafelson movie, Lopez plays Nicholson's Cuban mistress involved in his heist plans. They even had a few intimate bedroom sequences, which proved more difficult for the rookie than the veteran. "Jack was great," recalls Lopez of one particularly tough day on the Miami set. "He saw that I was getting a little jazzed - y'know, too much going on. He told me it's all about controlling that. Then he said, `This is just about us.' It really helped." As if she doesn't have enough going on in '97, Lopez is also planning two things she's never done before. "I'm working on a Latin music album," she confirms. The other? She's getting married to her boyfriend David Cruz in a few months. "Yeah," she says, recapping, "Selena, an Oliver Stone movie, and in bed with Jack Nicholson." It's been a very good year. November 30, 1995 Money Train carries former 'Fly Girl' on journey to big time She's on success express By BRUCE KIRKLAND -- Toronto Sun SAN FRANCISCO -- Not long ago, Jennifer Lopez was a reluctant member of the dancing-fools ensemble The Fly Girls on TV's acerbic In Living Color. Today, she is poised to become one of Hollywood's hottest stars.