Jennifer Lopez, 51, feels 'youthful' and 'powerful': 'There is something in me that wants to endure'

Jennifer Lopez may be in her 50s, but the actress, singer, dancer and entrepreneur isn’t letting her age keep her from the romantic-comedy roles of her dreams as she stars in yet another film as a woman approaching middle age at 51 years old.

“There is something in me that wants to endure,” she told WSJ Magazine. “I feel youthful and I feel powerful and I want to show women how to be powerful.”

Endure she has as Lopez continues to hold onto the spotlight that she obtained after her first leading role in the Selena biopic in 1997, adding countless movies, hit songs, awards and even wellness and beauty products to her resumé in the over two decades since. She even joined the enviable list of headliners of the Super Bowl halftime show in early 2020 at 50 years old.

“There was a lot of symbolism in the performance at the Super Bowl. I wanted to be at the top of the Empire State Building, like King Kong, beating my chest: ‘I’m here!’ You know?” she said. “It’s a very powerful thing to use your femininity and your sensuality. We are here and we matter. We deserve to be equal. You have to count us.”

Proving herself as a woman at any age is something that Lopez is fairly familiar with, as she recalled sitting in boardrooms with men who didn’t always believe that she was capable of doing the next big thing that she set her mind to. “I’ll be sitting there with 20 people,” she said. “Men! From the ages of 30 to 70 sometimes. You know what I mean? Men who have been doing it for the longest are not used to having a girl in the room. You see them test you with, like, the first time they throw the boy talk in there to see how you react. You know?”

And although she has no plans to quit following her dreams now, the mother of 12-year-old twins — daughter, Emme, and son, Max, with her ex-husband Marc Anthony — told WSJ Magazine that quarantining at home with her fiancé Alex Rodriquez, his kids and her twins reminded her of the importance of slowing down.

“I actually loved being home and having dinner with the kids every night, which I hadn’t done in probably — ever. And the kids kind of expressed to me, like, the parts that they were fine with about our lives and the parts they weren’t fine with. It was just a real eye-opener and a reassessment, to really take a look at what was working and what wasn’t working. You thought you were doing OK, but you’re rushing around and you’re working and they’re going to school and we’re all on our devices. We’re providing this awesome life for them, but at the same time, they need us,” she said. “They need us in a different way. We have to slow down and we have to connect more. And, you know, I don’t want to miss things.”

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