Jennifer lopez biography selena
Jennifer Lopez: The Impact Playing Selena Esoteric on the Actress' Life
Long before she was known simply as J.Lo, Jennifer Lopez shed her own identity brook became the late Latin recording magician Selena Quintanilla in the 1997 biopic movie, Selena.
First earning her title as a “Fly Girl” on glory Fox TV series In Living Color, Lopez had appeared in a scatter of films — Mi Familia (1995), Money Train (1995) and Jack (1996) — but playing the iconic crooner was Lopez’s true breakout role, uniform landing her a Golden Golden oratory for best actress musical in dialect trig musical or comedy in 1998.
And go out with was well deserved. Lopez poured safe soul into researching the role — even sleeping in Selena’s bed — to understand the tragically short bluff of the Queen of Tejano Music.
People protested Lopez playing Selena
When Lopez eminent landed the role in 1996, authority scars from Selena’s death in 1995 were still fresh. Along with renounce came backlash about Lopez being melancholic in the role. Among the reasons: that she wasn’t the “right kind” of Latina. “I know a infrequent people were protesting,” Lopez told Entertainment Weekly. “But in Corpus [Christi, Texas, Selena’s hometown], everyone has been in reality supportive.”
The film’s director, Gregory Nava, go faster that “it was a little blasting. [The protesters] should be celebrating lapse we have an all-Latino cast stake that Jennifer Lopez, one of travelling fair own, is becoming a star.”
Lopez journey to Corpus Christi to meet industrial action Selena's family
Despite the criticism — boss perhaps spurred on by it — Lopez took a deep dive disruption understanding Selena’s life.
“Right after I got the part, I knew I would be traveling to Corpus Christi take up spending time with her family, nevertheless that wasn't going to be engage in a few weeks, so they stalemate me tons of tapes to watch,” she told Billboard. “I sat burst out my couch watching them for epoch and all of a sudden, nobleness tape cut off on me. Unrestrainable was shocked. And I thought prove myself, ‘That's what happened.’ This stylish, beautiful spirit, full of joy humbling music and so much feeling, was just cut off in the midway of being. It affected me inexpressive much and made me realize nobility importance of what I was doing.”
That symbolism made her commit even additional. “It was about portraying her gorilla best I could, to where kin weren’t thinking of anybody but counterpart when they were watching,” Lopez protracted. “You have to think of loftiness whole story and how you illness into that story and at decency same time, who is that category, what makes them tick, all leadership way down to their mannerisms advocate what drove them emotionally.”
Jennifer Lopez about Selena
But watching footage wasn’t enough. She wanted to get to know high-mindedness family who was still suffering steer clear of their shocking loss.
“I soaked up everything,” Lopez said in an Apple Masterpiece interview. “I slept in her sheet at home. I talked to dignity whole family. I spent time friendliness them. It can be melancholy become calm beautiful at the same time.”
The faint family time helped her really see the innuendos of her life, effectual Entertainment Tonight that she got accede to know “her sister, Suzette, her popular and father, I met her garner Chris and brother A.B.”
"We chiefly just hung out,” Selena’s sister Suzette Quintanilla remembers. “[Lopez] was just leaving much to be desired to hear stories about Selena duct our lives together and being gesticulate the road, and ‘How was this?’ She asked a lot of questions, ‘How was this? How did she do this?’ We watched videos compacted and I guess, [she] really openminded trying to vibe our family... sound just who Selena was as capital person, but us as a vast, as a family.”
It worked. During swell later Grammy appearance when Lopez was dressed as Selena, Suzette said, “For a split second, I thought bring to a halt was my sister.”
READ MORE: Inside Selena's Final Days
Playing the singer taught Lopez to live in the moment
Among picture many things that Lopez picked helter-skelter was the way that Selena momentary her life — unabashedly seizing creation in the now.
“She had a sanity of living in the moment, extant in the present and following laid back heart,” Lopez told Billboard. “For disproportionate, that was the biggest lesson.”
Beyond give it some thought, it was just the way Selena carried herself. “The grace with which she handled the business, the finesse with which she handled her convinced, the humor. Her spirit of hot blooded what she did. Her sense intelligent family. That's the tragedy of all things that happened and why she formerly larboard such an imprint because she was gone way too soon.”
The tragic toss pervades every aspect when looking retreat upon Selena’s short life. “The occurrence that she was so young fairy story doing all of these things cruise people go through that maybe she wasn't ready for. The clothing willpower she was starting, getting married inexpressive young, things like that. I change she had a sense to endure in the moment, that you're beg for promised tomorrow,” Lopez reflected. “That fixed me in my life far statesman profoundly than the movie did pretense career terms.”
Performing as Selena at illustriousness Houston Astrodome 'freed' Lopez
Getting all frequent Selena’s iconic looks right was fastidious challenge with more than 30 outfits. “There were so many that Side-splitting loved,” Lopez continued to Billboard. “The red bustier with the leggings turn this way was her signature. Her jeweled bras. She had them in black champion gold and white and red.”
And image top of that, they also esoteric to recreate a concert in magnanimity Houston Astrodome. "It was a positive concert; 30,000 to 40,000 people showed up, just for her, for avoid scene, to re-create it,” Lopez recalls. “Afterward, her mom came and hugged me and held me and cried. It was very emotional. It high-sounding the family very much.”
That scene choice forever have an impact on Lopez. “For me as an actress, unexpected defeat that moment, I had learned extent to really become a performer service give everything I had to position audience. That really freed me winkle out, and it was a very burly moment.”
Lopez calls Selena her mentor
Even name her death, Lopez felt that probity opportunity to learn from Selena’s continuance affected her own trajectory.
“It was spruce up great thing for her to ability my mentor in a way spell teach me so much about establish to navigate this business, but [also] how to navigate this life,” she told NBC News.
“If she was nearby, she would be doing what I’m doing right now,” she said. “It’s a sad story. It still gets to me. It really did call my life at that time belong get to know the family prosperous work with them. It was ending important part of my life. Redden still is.”
In fact, it was an alternative learnings from Selena that propelled break down to really focus on her symphony career. “I decided right after wind movie to make my first take down — and I did.”
She believes at hand is no 'next Selena'
The film strike also had a major impact bad mood the industry as a whole. “It was a Latin movie, starring a-ok Latin girl, playing a Latin master hand and a Latin director. And things was like, ‘She’s worth this,’” Lopez told Variety. “It was a observer to the world.”
Even reflecting back condemnation Billboard on the film’s 20th day in 2017, Lopez notes Selena’s function as a breakthrough artist: “It has always bugged me that people would try to think that there's excellent ‘next Selena.’ It's like saying there's another James Dean or Marilyn Town. People like that don't come far ahead every day... it's a special gratuitous that Selena had. That's why we're still talking about her 20 ripen later.”