Jennifer Lopez opened up about what she has called the “many times” she thought she was just “going to quit” Hollywood because she said she was believing everything she was hearing about herself in the media.
During the 52-year-old actress’ upcoming Netflix documentary “Halftime,” the singer talked about how in the early days she had to find out who she really was because she had “really low self-esteem” and believed what she was hearing in the media about herself, per an NBC News piece published Tuesday.
“No matter what I achieved,” Lopez explained in the film. “Their [the media’s] appetite to cover my personal life overshadowed everything. I believed a lot of what they said, which is that I wasn’t really good.”
“My whole life i've been battling and battling to be heard… to be seen… to be taken seriously.”
Jennifer Lopez’s Halftime is now on Netflix pic.twitter.com/kM1SRCGspQ
— Netflix (@netflix) June 14, 2022
“There were many times where I was like I think I’m just going to quit,” she added. “I had to really figure out who I was and believe in that and not believe anything else.”
The documentary also looked at the early days of her romance with Ben Affleck and how their relationship was mocked by late-night hosts. The two got engaged in 2003 and then broke things off in 2004. The two have since rekindled their relationship in the last year and are now engaged.
Affleck appeared in the film and noted how he asked her once about the scrutiny she was under back in the early days of their romance.
“I said to her once, doesn’t this bother you?” the actor shared. “And she said, ‘I’m Latina, I expected this.’ You just don’t expect it, you expect to be treated fairly.”
At one point, the documentary focused on how when the “Hustlers” star came on the scene she wasn’t the “ideal” look of beauty and shared clips of how people in the industry would mock her butt.
“When I started working, the beauty ideal was very thin, blonde, tall, not a lot of curves,” Lopez explained. “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.”