SHE arrived like a modern-day Cleopatra, smiling and waving down at her adoring masses from the top deck of a trolley, her blown-out tresses fluttering in the wind.

“Lauren Bacall said, ‘It’s all about exits and entrances,’ ” clucked Jennifer Lopez’s publicist as the star — Saran-wrapped in a sparkly gold jumpsuit — descended the trolley stairs and tottered atop perilously high heels toward a makeshift red carpet set up at the Grove, an outdoor mall in Los Angeles, where she was taping a segment for “Extra.”

Amid shrieks and iPhone flashes, Ms. Lopez climbed up onstage and talked about her new album, “Love?” (Island Def Jam); about being a spokeswoman for L’Oréal; and about how to dress in her style for less.

“It doesn’t have to be expensive,” she said brightly, as models sashayed across the stage in Lopez-inspired outfits culled from the racks of Macy’s.

Meet the new, user-friendly J. Lo, who is back to doing it all, only without the imperious attitude that helped propel her to fame. In a few days she would fly to New York to introduce the new fashion lines that she and her husband, Marc Anthony, are designing for Kohl’s. Then she would return to L.A. for a flurry of events promoting “Love?” and her twice-a-week gig as a judge on the popular TV show “American Idol.”

Until recently, Ms. Lopez’s career trajectory was mirrored by the infamous tumble she took while performing her recession-insensitive ode to $900 shoes, “Louboutins,” at the 2009 American Music Awards. She and Sony, her longtime record company, split up after several lackluster albums. Her film “The Back-Up Plan” missed the mark.

But with “Idol,” which has 25 million viewers, Ms. Lopez, 41 and a former Fly Girl, has not only re-entered the public consciousness, but also modified the goddesslike persona that had become a liability. Whatever her protestations that she was Jenny From the Block, as her fame escalated in the early 2000s, Ms. Lopez became known as a demanding diva, thanks in part to a music video in which she cavorted shamelessly, and half-nude, on a yacht with Ben Affleck, her boyfriend at the time (the couple ended their engagement in 2004).

Today, Ms. Lopez is being praised for being a “nice,” constructive judge who, at this point, has shed more tears than any of the contestants. (When she said goodbye to Chris Medina, a young barista whose fiancée suffered a brain-damaging car accident just before he auditioned for “Idol,” Ms. Lopez was so distraught that she had to be consoled by fellow judges Randy Jackson and Steven Tyler.)

“Right now, Jennifer is a celebrity of the people, and it’s a strategy that is really, really working for her,” said Peter Castro, deputy managing editor of People, which recently named Ms. Lopez as the world’s most beautiful woman. “Before, there was a huge distance with the American public.”

Ms. Lopez, however, bats away the idea that there has been a makeover.

“The person everyone’s getting to know on ‘Idol’ now is always the person I’ve been,” she said one recent evening, after a taping. She’d changed out of the Nina Ricci dress she’d worn on the show and was stretched out on a sofa in her trailer, swaddled in cream-colored cashmere. The only concession to flash: a pair of studded, yes, Louboutins.

“I just think I went away for a while, and I’m being reintroduced to the public,” she went on. “And people who knew me from before are like: ‘Oh my God! I remember her!’ And then people who didn’t know me at all are just getting to know me for the first time. So I think it just feels brand new. It feels brand new to me, too, by the way. You know, this feels like my first album felt. It has that type of energy.”

Well, maybe a little less energy. Now the mother of 3-year-old twins (she said that she has no nanny and that family members take turns baby-sitting), Ms. Lopez insisted that she does not go as “full throttle” as she used to.

“I know how to say ‘no’ now,” she said. “I say: ‘I’m tired. I can’t do this. I’m not doing that tomorrow.’ I have kids now, so my life is not completely my own. They come first.”

In an ad campaign for Gucci’s new children’s collection, she is featured playing with her kids on the beach — a stark contrast from the severe S & M-ish shots she did for Louis Vuitton in 2003.

Still, J. Lo is not exactly Donna Reed.

“This is the woman who lays out three outfits for her kids and her husband every day before she leaves,” said Ms. Lopez’s manager, Benny Medina. “Every day! She may not be there for breakfast, but by the time she leaves, they all have three different outfits.”

Last spring, when Ms. Lopez was first asked to be a part of “Idol” ’s post-Simon Cowell reboot, she initially dismissed the idea. Then she realized the schedule would keep her close to her family. “I love artists, working with them and collaborating with them, and this seemed like the ultimate way to do that,” she said. “And it has turned out to be that, even more than I expected.”

Although early chatter this season was focused on Mr. Tyler, the former Aerosmith frontman and another newcomer to the judging panel, these days it’s all about J. Lo — including, most importantly, what is she wearing?

At a recent taping “Idol” taping, during one commercial break, a chorus of young girls shouted out from the top of the bleachers: “J. Lo, we love your shoes!”

(There was less enthusiasm for the Roberto Cavalli drop-crotch pants Ms. Lopez wore when she performed her new single, “On the Floor,” a few days later.)

“She’s made ‘Idol’ glamorous,” said Simon Fuller, “Idol” ’s creator and executive producer. “There’s something incredible when you have a superstar on the panel, who’s peaking in her career. You turn on the radio, you hear her song. You tune into other news channels or entertainment shows, they’re talking about her. You pick up any magazine, and there’s Jennifer Lopez.”

But what can “Idol” do for a star whose talent for fame has always superseded that for singing, dancing and acting?

Her catchy track “On the Floor,” featuring the rapper Pitbull, is a hit, selling more than 1.5 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The response to “Love?,” which features the work of the Lady Gaga producer RedOne, has been less spectacular, though. In its first week, the album sold 83,000 copies, according to SoundScan — an improvement over Ms. Lopez’s last English-speaking album, “Brave,” in 2007, but well behind the Beastie Boys’ “Hot Sauce Committee Part 2.”

On the film front, Ms. Lopez has been cast as a voice in 20th Century Fox’s next animated “Ice Age” movie, and is considering a leading role in a drama at Fox, where (per her “Idol” contract) her Nuyorican Productions company has a deal. But her box-office heat has cooled considerably since she was critically lauded for “Out of Sight” and carried high-grossing, romantic comedies like “The Wedding Planner.” (One word: “Gigli.”)

“I don’t know anyone who bats a thousand in the movie business,” Ms. Lopez said. “I’ve made some great movies, and I’ve made some not-so-great movies.”

She added: “Would I have wanted more opportunities to work on even greater films, consistently? Sure. Everyone wants to work on the great movie and have the great role and get nominated for an Oscar every time. Life is not like that.”

According to Mr. Medina, the most important thing for Ms. Lopez right now is her “presentation,” which he thinks has been helped by a new group of handlers — chiefly himself.

In recent years, “I could tell there were people around that weren’t sensitive to the nuances of how Jennifer Lopez music should be presented — her artistry,” Mr. Medina said. “It didn’t have any special, Jennifer kind of flair. To me, Jennifer defined a glamour and a New York, street-edge, Girl-From-the-Bronx-Gone-to-Hollywood-Done-Well attitude, and that has to come across in how she’s presented.”

(Last fall, Ms. Lopez fired her longtime publicists at the public relations powerhouse BWR.)

Mr. Medina, who discovered Will Smith and has worked with Mariah Carey, has been around the block with Jenny before. In the late 1990s he helped turn her into a global brand with albums like “This is Me … Then” and “J. Lo” and fragrance and fashion lines.

But in 2003, in the thick of her “Bennifer” period, Ms. Lopez’s relationship with Mr. Medina fell apart, culminating in a lawsuit she filed alleging that he had misappropriated more than $100,000. (Ms. Lopez’s publicist, Mark Young, wrote in an e-mail that the lawsuit was “never pursued” and was resolved by a “financial solution.”)

By 2004, Ms. Lopez had retreated with her husband — now also one of her key professional advisers, she said — to Miami. Although she continued to star in films and to record music, her public profile dimmed.

The origins of her “rebirth” as her team likes to call it, date back more than three years, when Mr. Medina and Ms. Lopez ran into each other at an event after years of not speaking. Ms. Lopez was seven months’ pregnant, and without saying anything, Mr. Medina dropped an envelope in her lap. It was an application to be her twins’ godfather — a role they had always talked about his having.

“It was like passing a note in class to the girl that you love,” Ms. Lopez recalled. “Kinda like, ‘Throw it to her.’ I got it on my lap.”

“I read it,” she said, “and it was so sweet.

“And I realized that we really belong together, in each other’s lives.”

At the Grove event, Mr. Medina hovered near the stage, looking like a football coach calling out plays to the event producers, who every few seconds would hustle over to him and nod their heads obediently as he gave orders. Ms. Lopez periodically looked his way as she smiled through sunny sound bites. When it was time for Ms. Lopez’s all-important exit, and there was confusion about how she would leave the stage, Mr. Medina shouted to one frightened-looking minion: “I don’t care what they say! Just do it!”

Standing a few feet from Mr. Medina, Joe Francis, creator of “Girls Gone Wild,” said: “Normally, he’s more hands-on. With Mariah, he’d be up onstage, telling her what to say.

“With J. Lo, he gives her a little more leeway,” said Mr. Francis, who was texting Kim Kardashian (whom he said he “idolizes” and who “wants to be” Ms. Lopez).

The star, however, seems to have learned that she can’t control everything. In her trailer, when asked what the biggest disappointment in her career had been, she didn’t hesitate: her failed fashion lines.

“That was sad for me,” she said, as she pushed a strand of stray hair back in place. “I just felt like I never got a fair chance to do it right. And on top of it, I felt like I was trapped in a situation I couldn’t get out of, and my name was stamped on things that I didn’t believe in.”

As for what went wrong — the sportswear line, which had its debut in 2001, was criticized for being overpriced and cheaply made — Ms. Lopez said she “didn’t understand the business well enough” and didn’t have enough creative control. More crucially, she didn’t seem to understand how to translate her iconic red carpet style — the navel-plunging green Versace gown she wore to the Grammy Awards in 2000; the mink eyelashes — to an off-the-rack business. The Kohl’s partnership is an attempt to rectify this with a Jessica Simpson-like “lifestyle brand” oriented toward the bargain shopper.

“The difference this time around is that Jennifer is fully engaged with a company that is professionally staffed to really develop anything she wants, from towels to knee-high suede boots,” said the fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger, a partner in the deal (his younger brother, Andy, oversaw Ms. Lopez’s original line). “Literally, her wish is their command.”

And he has no doubt she’ll succeed.

“She lives fashion,” Mr. Hilfiger said.” She sings about and says it’s the most fun thing about getting ready for ‘Idol.’ Her eyes light up when you ask her what kind of shoes she’s wearing. Louboutins, naturally.”

by Kevin Sessums

Jennifer Lopez opens up about motherhood, Scientology, and a “nervous breakdown” that she’s never publicly discussed

“Don’t blow the horn,” I tell my driver as we approach the gates. “I’m sure we’re being watched. A guard will appear.”

Sure enough, the ornate iron gates swing open and a large Latin guard speeds toward us on a Segway Human Transporter, his ear glued to a walkie-talkie.

“I’m here to see Miss Lopez,” I inform him as glares at me through the window.

We are led through a canopy of beech trees and oaks on the immaculately manicured grounds of the Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez estate on the North Shore of Long Island­–the same rolling acreage where F. Scott Fitzgerald set The Great Gatsby.

As we park behind a $300,000 Audie Spyker sports car, Anthony emerges from the driver’s side and stares back at me. In a T-shirt and a pair of clam diggers that reveal a tattoo on his right calf, he strides into the house through a side door without a word.

I’ve caught the family on a bad day. Lopez, who gave birth to twins Emme Guatelupe and Max David only four months ago, has caught a bug from her daughter and is feeling ill. But, ever the trouper, she agrees to go through with our interview anyway, opening up about topics including Scientology, breast-feeding, and a “nervous breakdown,” as she calls it, that she’s never publicly discussed.

When I meet Lopez in a dimly lit pine study filled with gold records and Grammy awards, she has dispensed with the usual packaging and gloss. Her unwashed hair is pulled severely back and there’s a halo of frizz around the crown of her head. She wears no make-up, her eyes are glassy, and her feverish cheeks are aglow. I think of Fitzgerald’s heroine, Daisy Buchanan, whose face was “sad and lovely with bright things in it.”

Before I can fully apologize for putting her through an interview, Max begins to cry upstairs. Daisy from the Block excuses herself and returns with both twins in her arms. Emme’s ears are already pierced with tiny gold hoops in them. Max is wearing a black onesie with an array of sequins on its back.

After refusing to have a nanny for the first four months of her children’s lives, she has reluctantly ceded that she may need one. “I’m trying out my first one today,” she whispers. “But I still can’t stand the sound of my babies crying without tending to them myself.”

Lopez, wearing an orange Scoop T-shirt dress, looks as gratefully exhausted as any new mother. I ask her if she needs some privacy so she can nurse the twins who are beginning to squirm. “Is that something you’ve chosen to do?  To breast-feed?”

“No,” she says as I ask if the La Leche League has come after her for such a decision. She laughs and readjusts the twins in her arms. “No. No. Some people are radical about it. But to each his own.”

“If you had had only one child would you have chosen to breast-feed?”

“No … I … ah …. it’s not that … I’d rather not discuss it. It’s a whole other thing. If you want to go off-the-record I’ll tell you.”

We decide to stay on-the-record. “Have you suffered any postpartum depression in the last four months?” I ask.

She admits there have been a few rough days. “People kept prepping me for it, but it didn’t happen. At the tenth day after giving birth all that chemical stuff did peak - that hormone thing - and I did cry a lot that day because I was having so much trouble moving. I had a c-section,” she says. “Have you ever seen a c-section? I told them I didn’t want to know anything, but afterwards they told me they had cut six layers. That’s why you can’t walk afterwards. I couldn’t get up fast enough to feed the babies. It went on for about three days. Marc was helping out a lot and I was crying and crying and going, ‘Oh, Papi … they’re going to know everybody more than me.”  She begins to pretend she is sobbing, waking up a now sleeping Emme in the process.  “They’re going to love everybody more than me!” She stares into her daughters opened eyes. “Don’t worry, baby. I was just acting,” Lopez says.  “Mommy is an actress and she does dramatic things.”

The Breakdown

Any sort of depression is hard to imagine from a woman who seems to barrel through any sort of emotional problem.

“I don’t get nervous. I don’t get depressed. Blah blah blah,” she says, but pauses to reconsider. Still staring into her daughter’s eyes, she reaches an instant, instinctual decision. She will start now, in this moment, not-lying in her daughter’s presence. “There was a time when I was very overworked and I was doing music and movies and so many things. I was suffering from a lack of sleep. And I did have a kind of nervous breakdown. I froze up on a set.  Well, not on a set, but in my trailer. I was like - I don’t want to move. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to do anything. It was on that movie Enough,” she says, referring to the film in which she played a battered wife who finally fights back. “Yeah. I did. I had a nervous breakdown.”

“There were no signs leading up to it. You really don’t know what’s happening at first. I was going, what’s going on? It was about five in the afternoon in my trailer and I just sat there. I remember telling my assistant at the time - Arlene - to go get the director Michael Apted and I asked if I could go home because I was feeling so sick and weird. I kept saying, ‘I’m not weak. I’m not weak.’ It’s funny what tricks your mind plays on you. I just didn’t want people to think I was falling apart. But when I look back on it now it’s so odd to me that those are the words I chose to say: I AM NOT WEAK. Michael let me off and when he left I just sat there and started crying and felt frozen. I didn’t want to move. My bodyguard who had been with me for many years picked me up and put me in the car and they took me to a doctor … Right away they want to give you pills. But I have never liked the idea of pills and kept saying no to that and just kept asking what was wrong with me. ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong,’ the doctor said. ‘You’re sleep deprived.  You’re overworked. Go home and go to bed.’ He told me to go back to work on Monday after a weekend of sleeping because if I waited longer that I would only get more panicked about working. So that’s what I did. I’ve still never been to a shrink. I’m not a shrinky person.”

On Scientology

The conversation turns to Scientology. “I know a lot of your friends are Scientologists,” I say. “Your father has been a Scientologist for about 20 years …”

“More than that now,” she says.

“Scientologists don’t believe in shrinks. Would you ever call on Scientology if you were having those problems again?” I ask.

“I do know a lot about Scientology. And I know about the practices.  I know all about what the technology is and all that kind of stuff. It’s very helpful.  So in a sense, yeah, you do call on it.”

“Do you consider yourself a Scientologist?”

“No.”

“If you were, would you be open about it?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have a problem saying it because I know what it is. I have no problems with it and it really actually bothers me that people have such a negative feeling towards it.”

“That it is too exotic? Too cultish?”

“Just negative feelings.”

“Would you consider schooling Emme and Max in a Scientology school?” I ask.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t mind. Not at all. Because I know that the technologies that they have are very helpful… It’s all about communication. That’s the thing I really don’t like about talking about this. I do know so many great people who do do it, who choose it as a lifestyle and really follow it and it is their religion…I just wish that people wouldn’t judge it without knowing what it is.”

Selling the Twins’ Baby Pics

Emme and Max are already contributing to the Lopez empire, estimated at close to half a billion dollars. Earlier this year, Lopez and Anthony sold the rights to the newborns’ photos to People magazine for an estimated $6 million. Any internal debate that she was using her babies as a commodity?

“No. No. I think one of the reasons that the price went so high is that we didn’t want to do it for so long,” says Lopez. “We weren’t into it. I was like, no, I don’t really want to. No. No way. But then it got to the point that you go, well, now you’re being stupid with these offers… I thought I can set them up. I can put this away just for them.”

“Did you give any of the money to charity?”

“We gave a little bit and I saved the rest for them.”

“Don’t their parents make enough money?” I ask. “I mean, according to Forbes you’re the 9th richest female working in show business.”

“Hmmm …” Lopez says. “I wouldn’t believe everything I read.”

On Diva-dom

Lopez’s hyphenates include her movie career, her music, her television production company, her two fashion lines, her videos, her choreographic career, her sold-out concert appearances around the world with her husband, and her hugely profitable fragrance lines. “I’m up to seven or eight fragrances now,” she says, having lost count.

Her nose for business all started with her selling bootlegged high-end perfume behind a tire store when she was growing up in the Bronx. It is when that tough little teenager still surfaces that can cause confusion to her detractors and the labeling of her as a controlling diva. She can, some claim, border on being a bully to make up for those times in her life when she was perhaps bullied herself.

“I think I’ve always been a favorite to pick on,” she says. “Once you have a lot of success you become a target in many ways…I just think that the whole diva thing is a misrepresentation of who I am. I think some of that is because of where I came from. I came from the Bronx and a certain background. I worked really hard. I kept my focus on the right things. And still even with that they find stuff to pick on.”

Lopez has always been driven to reinvent herself by the forces of her past.  Indeed, one could claim that her vast business empire has been built on the memories of her days as a fancified bootlegger. Suddenly I realize, sitting here looking at her defend herself against an interloper like me, how wrong I have been about her. Though she is wearing all that orange, she is another of Fitzgerald’s characters. The one who dared to wear pink. Whose seductive gaucheness permeated the story. Who had the newer bank account.  She is not Buchanan. She’s Gatsby.

TheDailyBeast

Jessica has some nice things to say about Jennifer Lopez in an interview with USA Weekend. She even admitted that she has a chandelier just like Jennifer has in her nursery.

Do you have a chandelier in the nursery like Jennifer Lopez?
Actually, I do. I got a really beauti- ful one.

Do you think, especially after this presidential election, that we won’t be so obsessed with skin color as a nation?
I think my generation is the last generation that sees color. In this next generation coming up, everybody is mixed. And I think with people like Jennifer Lopez and Halle Berry being out there opening movies and having clothing lines and pushing the idea of ideal beauty, [the ideal isn't] Christie Brinkley anymore. You don’t have to look like Barbie.
USA Weekend

Singer Marc Anthony and actress/singer Jennifer Lopez attend “A Night To Benefit Raising Malawi & UNICEF”, hosted by Madonna and Gucci, at The United Nation in New York City on February 6, 2008.

• J.Lo “gets out of the house” for Madonna’s U.N. fundraiser
A heavily pregnant Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony hit the United Nations on Wednesday for singer Madonna’s star studded fund-raising dinner for Malawi orphans and the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “We feel great, we’re happy to be here for such a great cause — it takes a lot to get me out of the house these days,” said Lopez, who was dressed in a brown Gucci dress and joked with reporters that she might have to sneak out of the dinner if she went into labor! Amid media reports she is expecting more than one bundle of joy, Lopez simply smiled when asked if she was expecting twins. Unsurprising, most of the stars who walked the black carpet were dressed in Gucci, which paid for the entire event, although Billy Joel’s wife, TV host Katie Lee, admitted his suit was from the Italian designer’s “last season.” Gucci Chief Executive Mark Lee said the event had already raised $3.7 million “before the guests sat down to dinner” and would raise more through a celebrity auction. Alicia Keys, Timbaland and Rihanna were also slated to perform.
Reuters

• A very pregnant Jennifer Lopez – whose father recently confirmed she is expecting twins – stole the scene in a flowing brown Gucci gown with an alligator belt. (Even at nine months along, the singer is still rocking high heels. She lifted up her skirt to flash a pair of platforms to PEOPLE.) Her ex, Sean “Diddy” Combs, also hit the event, which coincided with NYC’s fashion week. When asked if he had any tips for Lopez, the mogul (who welcomed twins of his own in 2006) replied, “She doesn’t need any advice. She’s a loving person. She’ll make a great mother.”
People

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Musicians Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez attend the Marchesa Fall 2008 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2008 at Chelsea Art Museum on February 6, 2008 in New York City.
Updated

• Pregnant Lopez stuns at New York Fashion Week
Jennifer Lopez stunned the stylish at New York City Fashion Week on Wednesday by showing off her baby bump in a breathtaking teal Marchesa dress. Despite reports she’s ready to deliver twins at any moment, Lopez couldn’t stay away from the catwalk and braved the big freeze in the Big Apple to attend the Marchesa show. She said: “I’m feeling good. I haven’t gone out a lot for the past few months, but Marchesa has been incredibly good to me. They are just amazing!” And the ever-fashion conscious star admitted she simply cannot pull off the sweatpants look that other mums-to-be adopt just before they go into labour. She added: “People make fun of me because when I do have them over to my house I do have a dress on. I don’t like the way the sweats look with the extra weight.” Lopez’s father, David, confirmed his daughter was expecting twins during an interview with a Spanish-language news show on Monday.

• Marc Anthony eager, excited to become father
Marc Anthony is eager and excited about his new babies. Anthony, whose wife Jennifer Lopez is expecting twins, said he can’t wait for the star to give birth. Anthony said, “I’m so excited to be a daddy. What’s not to be excited about?” Lopez is expected to deliver the babies later this month, and said she finds her baby bump makes it difficult to choose an oufit for New York Fashion Week. “For the size I am right now, I’m still kind of slim through the front - which is crazy,” Lopez, 38, said. “I tried on some things, and some things just make you look like you’re wearing a tent. But this dress I chose in the end is very cute. And it has pockets and the whole thing.” She also finds it difficult to abide by doctors’ advice to rest, and rather prefers to keep busy. At the Marchesa fashion show, Lopez told People magazine, “Right now the best thing I can do for myself, for my body, is to keep resting which is not easy for me. “I like keeping busy and it is very hard because if they say, ‘Be off your feet for four hours a day.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s just so hard.”

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From Never Land to flying carpets to the forested domain of an Indian princess, stars travel to their very own Fantasylands in a new round of celebrity images from famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. The new images continue the “Disney Dream Portrait Series” of celebrity photography produced by Leibovitz as Disney Parks extends, through 2008, its “Year of a Million Dreams” celebration on both coasts. Leibovitz’s images capture the transformational power of Disney dreams during a celebration that invites visitors to live out their own Disney dreams as never before at California’s Disneyland and Florida’s Walt Disney World resorts. The latest installment of Leibovitz photography spotlights more celebrities living out their fantasies by starring in Disney dream scenes:

“Where a whole new world awaits”: Aboard their genie-powered magic carpet, Jennifer Lopez (Jasmine) and husband Marc Anthony (Aladdin) soar through the Arabian night. Complete with Whoopi Goldberg (Genie) pushing them among the stars, the two images comprise a dream scene straight from a magic lantern in a scene entitled “Where a whole new world awaits.” For Lopez, the Leibovitz shoot was both transformational and inspirational: “It’s unbelievable,” she said, “a modern princess and the guy with the flying carpet… and the idea of maybe in the future my children seeing me and Marc as Jasmine and Aladdin… I think that would be pretty cool.”

Added Goldberg: “I think those genie-like qualities worked best for me. For me to come out of a bottle and give somebody three wishes seems like a pretty good bargain.”
(more…)

Jennifer Lopez is amazed people were surprised when she finally unleashed the big secret and announced she was pregnant. “I kind of feel like everybody knew anyway,” the singer tells Harper’s Bazaar for its February issue. “I was on tour with a bubble gut!” The glowing singer, with Marc Anthony at her side onstage, told the crowd during her final Miami concert Nov. 8: “Marc and I are expecting a baby!” Having ducked the entire issue of the pregnancy for weeks, including when she appeared the previous month on TV with Diane Sawyer and with David Letterman, Lopez, 38, speaking on behalf of herself and Anthony, 39, now says, “I do realize people want to know because they’re interested, but this is the first time I’m going through this. This is my experience and my husband’s experience, and we get to hold that for a little while.”

She adds, “We’re just getting used to the fact that we’ve told everybody.” Still, when it comes to her privacy, “I’m just feeling too protective to open that door right now,” says Lopez. “It’s a Pandora’s box. It’s a destructive lifestyle to be out there. I know because I’ve lived it. Being on the cover of the tabloids every day for two years - it’s hard. You start forgetting who you really are inside.” And her husband? “Marc is a really private person, and he’s been singing onstage since he was really young. He made me realize you can be an artist, and have credibility and success, without your life being on public display 24 hours a day.”

Looks Forward to Time Off
She is aware that the Lopez-Anthony baby will be of tremendous interest to paparazzi, but the infant “will be whatever we are,” she says. “Private when it comes to that stuff.” Once the baby arrives, there is the matter of taking time off. Asked how long that will be, Lopez answers, “I don’t know - and I like that, because my life has been so planned for so many years. Once I did the tour, I really just wanted to shut it down, and since then I’ve had to do three things, including a video. It may not sound like a lot, but you know, as this point, any woman can sympathize. It is a lot. I was ready just to sit.”
People

Singer Jennifer Lopez has revealed she cries every time she sees a “soppy” advert on TV. The ‘Jenny From The Block’ singer - who’s expecting her first child with hubby Marc Anthony, admits that watching a “touching” commercial often sends her into floods of tears. She said: “Anything that is touching makes me cry - any commercial that is sappy and silly. Things about dads make me cry, maybe because of my relationship with my own father. But anytime I see anything about a dad with his little girl, and I’m over tired, I’m gone!” Lopez recently triggered speculation that she is pregnant with twins after ordering matching outfits for a baby boy and a girl. Jennifer requested the monogrammed baby grows - a blue version with the word ‘Prince’ and a pink one labeled ‘Princess’ - from top Los Angeles boutique Petit Tresor. J.Lo confirmed her pregnancy whilst on stage with her husband in Miami in November.
ShowbizSpy