Jennifer Lopez Says She’s ‘Always’ Struggled to Be Taken Seriously as Actress

Jennifer Lopez still likes defying expectations.

During Sept. 28’s episode of CBS News Sunday Morning, the star spoke to host Lee Cowan about her career and her latest movie, Kiss of the Spider Woman. It’s Lopez’s first-ever movie musical, the showcase that she says she has “been waiting for my whole life.”

In the interview, Lopez, 56, opened up about having to prove herself as an actress when others wanted to box her in as only a dancer or singer.

“People, when they see you first as one thing, it’s hard for them to see you as something else. You just have to show them. You can’t let that discourage you,” explained Lopez.

Cowan asked, “Did you struggle to be taken seriously at first?” Lopez responded with a laugh: “At first? At first — and maybe always.”

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“A little bit. Or maybe it’s just me in my own head,” she added. “I don’t know. I’ve always felt a bit of the underdog. Definitely misunderstood. But it comes with the territory of being in the public eye. People are not gonna really know who you are, your heart. And then they see it and go, ‘Oh, that’s who she is,’ then they hear something and they go, ‘Oh, no, that’s not who she is.’ And they get confused. I get it. I understand.”

“But I stay steady,” said Lopez. “And that’s the most important thing, I think. I don’t change. I grow, but I don’t change.”

Cowan pointed out that Lopez has starred in movies opposite other A-listers like Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, George Clooney and Robin Williams, so “how could you not be taken seriously?” Lopez said, “I don’t know.”

Lopez has been nominated for two Golden Globe awards: Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for 1997’s Selena and Best Supporting Actress for 2019’s Hustlers. Hustlers also earned Lopez nods at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards.

Kiss of the Spider Woman will be in theaters Oct. 10 after making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Lopez stars alongside Diego Luna and Tonatiuh as a “silver screen diva” named Aurora, a.k.a. Ingrid Luna.

An adaptation of the 1976 novel and its Tony Award–winning Broadway musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman comes from director Bill Condon, who wrote the Chicago movie musical that won six Oscars in 2003, including Best Picture.

Back in 2018, Lopez spoke about how she blocked out critics who doubted her skills as a performer and proved them wrong.

“I don’t let the opinions of others really influence how I think about myself. And that took a long time,” she said on a panel after a New York City screening of her movie Second Act. “Everybody was like ‘She can’t sing. She can’t dance. She can’t act. She is just a pretty face’. Or ‘Her butt is big,’ or whatever they were saying about me. And I started thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s true.’ And it really hurt me for a long time.”

Still, she pushed past the detractors. “I just couldn’t allow myself to let that become who I was. I was like, ‘No, I’m gonna make another record, I’m gonna make another song, I’m gonna make another movie.’ I’m a great actress, I’m a great singer, a great dancer, I’m great at this stuff! And I’m gonna keep going!’ And I did. And that’s all I did. I just kept going. And I just started working harder and harder than everybody else.”

“I started believing in myself,” Lopez added at the time. “I started believing in the fact that I wasn’t an imposter, that I wasn’t a fake.”