Jennifer Lopez: Dream Girl

The Bronx may also have given Lopez a conceptual idea about celebrity. Throughout her career, she has been attracted to razzle-dazzle, a kind of big-time glam approach to being famous. Like Elizabeth Taylor, whose performance in Butterfield 8 as an alluring prostitute with an uptown-downtown schism inspired these photos, Lopez has a stunning public persona, linked to the likes of Sean “Puffy” Combs (as he was known when they were together), Ben Affleck, and Marc Anthony—and rife with thrilling red carpet moments. But she outdid herself when she appeared as a presenter at the Grammy Awards in 2000. She wore a cut-to-there sea green chiffon Versace gown that clung to her curves and left little to the imagination. “We had looked at a few dresses, and nothing was right,” Lopez recalled. “My stylist said, there’s this one dress, but other people have worn it. I tried on the Versace and decided to wear it anyway. But I was still surprised by the reaction: When I came onstage with David Duchovny, who was the biggest star in the world then, he said to the audience, ‘Nobody is looking at me,’ ” Lopez said, laughing. “This loud sound started from the back of the room—it was kind of like a roar, over me in the dress. When I went to my seat, I said, ‘What’s the big deal?!’ Puffy and Benny were waiting, and they said, ‘You have to take pictures in that dress.’ ” And so she did.

Whether Lopez learned from her boyfriends or the brilliant Medina (or both), she is an old-school mix of diva and down-to-earth. America seems to prefer its stars to be that combo: glitzy with a resemblance of the real. Instinctively, Lopez gets that balance. She may wear sweats, but she has rhinestones on her sneakers.

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