It hasn’t always been an easy road for Jennifer Lopez. In her new Netflix documentary Halftime, the Marry Me actress addressed some of the negative comments she received about her body and her talents early in her career.
“I grew up around women with curves, so it was nothing ever I was ashamed of,” she said, adding that, when she got her start in the entertainment industry, “the beauty ideal was very thin, blonde, tall, not a lot of curves.”
The Hustlers actress continued, “It was hard when you think people think you're a joke — like, you're a punchline. But I wound up affecting things in a way that I never intended to affect them.”
Lopez added that the immense criticism she received affected how she felt about herself. “I just had a really low self-esteem. I really believed a lot of what they said, which is I wasn't any good — that I wasn't a good singer, I wasn't a good actress, I wasn't a good dancer. I wasn't good at anything. I just didn't even belong here. Why wouldn't I just go away?” she said.
At one point in the documentary, Lopez’s fiancé Ben Affleck recalled a conversation between the two of them. “I said to Jennifer once, 'Doesn't this bother you?' And she said, 'I'm Latina, I'm a woman; I expected this. You just don't expect it. You expect to be treated fairly,'” he said.