From movies to music to dance to entrepreneurship, Jennifer Lopez has had a long and celebrated career—if you looked up multihyphenate in the dictionary, you’d see her name there. Her performance in the 2019 film Hustlers generated ample awards buzz—Oscars, Golden Globes—but, ultimately, she didn’t walk away with any major honors.
It’s a subject she touched on—as Variety put it, “not receiving any top prizes in the entertainment world”—at last night’s Elle Women in Hollywood event. “I don’t have an Oscar,” she said after being presented with the Icon Award by Universal Pictures boss Donna Langley. “And I don’t have a Golden Globe. And I don’t have a Grammy or a SAG Award or a BAFTA or a Critics Choice or a Hollywood Film Award. But this is my fifth Icon Award. Of all the things that I thought I would grow up to be when I was a little girl, the last thing you know I was gonna have on my list was icon.”
Not that Lopez is complaining about the recognition: “This award is all about being a representative symbol, in this case, what it is to be a woman in Hollywood,” she said. “But when I think about that, and about the things that I spent my life doing and working at, you know, I started off as a dancer. And then I started making movies and then records and then creating my own brand somehow and companies each step of the way. And each transition, there seemed to be tremendous opposition, both literal and, like, physical and emotional, to the idea that you could do many different things and be taken seriously.”
Lopez is no doubt taken seriously now, as evidenced by her award Tuesday night. “It’s great to be recognized by other women,” she told Access Hollywood. “It makes it kind of extra special for me. We all want to be accepted by all the girls. We want to be part of the girls’ club. And it’s very humbling for me. I’m very honored.”
Lopez’s husband Ben Affleck joined her on the red carpet; the two collaborated on the visual album that will accompany her This Is Me…Now album, which will be released in early 2024. “This Is Me…Then is an album I wrote about the love of my life 20 years ago, [and] everybody knew what that album was about and so, 20 years later, we are back together,” she said, per Page Six. Lopez said the newly-written tracks “just poured out of me,” and that the project was a “very personal journey.”
“It was amazing,” she said of working with Affleck. “I mean, nobody knows me [and] my story better than him.” (This Is Me…Now will be released on February 16, after its lead single “Can’t Get Enough” drops on January 10.)
At the Elle event—which honors “the women who are influencing Hollywood today from the best red carpet appearances, the women behind the camera, to Elle’s very own cover stars,” according to the magazine’s description—Lopez was honored alongside Nina Garcia, America Ferrera, Danielle Brooks, Eva Longoria, Fantasia Barrino, Greta Lee, Jodie Foster, Lily Gladstone, and Taraji P. Henson.
“To be honest, I’ve always kind of marched to the beat of my own drum,” Lopez said, per Entertainment Tonight. “[And] it feels great to be recognized by other women.”
In her cover interview for the magazine, Lopez remarked on aging in Hollywood, telling Elle “People have realized that women just get sexier as they get older. They get more learned and more rich with character. All of that is very beautiful and attractive, and not just physically, but on the inside, the beauty that you gain as you get older, the wisdom you gain.”
And as for those Oscars or Golden Globes or Grammys? There’s apparently still time: “It might be 70, it might be 80, it might be 90, I don’t know,” she said of when she might retire. “That has always been the mindset that I’ve had: To never let anybody put me in a box because of where I was born, where I’m from, what age I am, anything like that. Those boundaries don’t exist for me.”
