Jennifer Lopez on Feeling Lost After Her Divorce and Getting Her Second Act

After trailblazing a hybrid career in music, movies, television, fashion, and fragrance, Jennifer Lopez is worth an estimated $300 million. She lives in a Bel-Air mansion, dates one of the most successful athletes alive, and, at age 49, looks like this. Her beauty is so illogically luminous that when her friend Leah Remini first met Lopez over a decade ago, Remini said she almost hoped the multi-hyphenate might be dumb or mean, anything to make Lopezs bounty of beauty and talent more palatable. Fortunately for Remini, that was not the case.

In A Second Act, the $300-million pop star plays Maya, an assistant manager at a Costco-like superstore who coordinates weekly women's conversations in the patio furniture section, lives in an outer-borough home, and struggles with confidence. The casting may sound preposterous, but Lopez would argue otherwise. She developed the film with her agent-turned-producing partner Elaine Goldsmith Thomas, and imprinted the uplifting comedy with her D.N.A.

“I grew up and I lived in the Bronx until my mid-20s, so I understand that life,” Lopez told Vanity Fair, explaining why it was so easy to channel her inner Maya. “And Ive been lucky enough to grow into something else, but at the same time, those roots stay with you. Playing these characters is a chance to tap back into the core of who I am.”

There are lots of J. Lo winks and nods in A Second Act. Lopezs on-screen B.F.F. is played by Remini, her real-life B.F.F., and their chemistry is infectiously fun. Lopezs on-screen boyfriend, played by Milo Ventimiglia, coaches minor-league baseball and speaks to Maya in sports metaphors. (Former New York Yankee Alex Rodriduez, Lopezs real-life boyfriend, does the same—though Lopez said the script was written before A-Rod came into her life. “But of course, he loved that part,” she added.)

Lopez, whose first career break came when she was cast as a “Fly Girl” on In Living Color, even dances twice in the movie. One scene involves her friends giving her a confidence boost via group dance to Salt-N-Pepas “Push It.” The other is a Mr. & Mrs. Smith-esque sequence at a corporate holiday party. (“All of us love music. It was like the fourth character in the film,” Lopez said.) Another storyline involves Lopezs character, after serendipitously landing a job at a major cosmetic company, working overtime in a lab to come up with an affordable-yet-organic skincare line; this month, Lopez announced that she will be unveiling her own organic skin-care line as well. “The skin-care line is something Ive been working on for many years, because its one of the most frequent questions I get, about my secrets and how I maintain my skin,” she said, when asked about the synchronicity of the release date and the announcement. “Weve been developing A Second Act for years, and it just kind of coincided. The universe has a funny way of working.”

Beneath all these wink-and-nod elements, there is an underlying authenticity to Second Act, more personal threads that seem culled from Lopezs real life. In the film, Maya delicately navigates all kinds of men—the condescending bosses who underestimate her; the sensitive boyfriend; the scheming, jealous co-worker; the benevolent-but-unaware boss—interfacing with them assertively but unthreateningly. During our interview, I asked Lopez about the male-ego trip wires shes had to navigate. Too brain-fried (or smart) to offer an example, she answered by sharing her own belief about the opposite sex.

“I think as women, we have to do that all the time,” she said. “Were said to be the more fragile, sensitive gender, but I think the truth is that men are much more fragile and sensitive. And we have to be stronger and more conscious of not hurting fragile egos at times. So its a line you do have to tiptoe on all the time—especially as a strong, assertive woman, which can be off-putting to men who are not confident and secure on their own.”

The major message of A Second Act is also authentic to Lopez—feeling lost, and like it is too late to start over. The last time Lopez felt lost, she said, was after filing for divorce from Marc Anthony. Her twins were about three years old at the time: “When they were born, I realized, Wow, I havent laughed and smiled like this in a long time. It made me realize that I had spent a lot of my life being happy and doing what I loved, but I had also spent some of my life being unhappy personally and not living in as much happiness and gratitude and the present as I needed to be doing.”

Her own second act, Lopez said, began when she realized she had the power to make the other areas of her life as happy and fulfilling as she felt with her children. “I realized that the only person who could guide me out of it was myself,” said Lopez. “And I had work to do and I had to make myself happy and figure myself out. That was a big turning point in my life. You get a new perspective and a gratitude and you grow into somebody who realizes that your mistakes are not what define you. What defines you is what you do after your mistakes and how you learn what is meant to be learned from those moments.”

Lopez doesnt usually do as much press as shes been doing for A Second Act—hitting talk shows, red carpets, and marathon interviews round the clock. But she found happiness after thinking it might be too late for her to do so. And she thinks the sorts of audiences who have already responded positively to the film in test screenings could do the same.

“Everybody has the same feelings where you feel lost at some point in your life and think, What am I doing? Is there more? Should I dream bigger? Can I start now? Is it too late? I just feel like that's why people are responding to this movie in the way that they are,” she said. “Because it really does make you feel like the only person stopping you from anything in your life is you. And you really have that power to make your life whatever you want it to be.”

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Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Julie MillerJulie Miller is a Senior Hollywood writer for Vanity Fairs website.