Jennifer Lopez felt "special" to be Latina in the early days of her career.
Jennifer Lopez speaks out about her Latina heritage
The 52-year-old pop star - who started out as a dancer and an actress in the early 19990s before enjoying chart success with hits such as 'Jenny From the Block' and 'Love Don't Cost a Thing' in the 2000s - was "encouraged" by her parents to embrace her heritage and noted that it made her feel "like a unicorn" as she entered Hollywood for the first time.
She said: "It's just who I was. My parents encouraged me to be proud of who I was. And so when I went into these worlds, like Hollywood, where we were not represented at all, I almost felt like a unicorn. 'I'm Latina. I'm Jennifer Lopez from the Bronx. And my parents are Puerto Rican, I'm Puerto Rican.' And I think it made me feel special."
The 'Marry Me' actress - who tied the knot with fellow Hollywood star Ben Affleck back in July 2022 more than a year after rekindling their early 2000s romance - went on to explain that she endured a "whole thing" with body image when she found stardom, explaining that most people she found after fame were "size zero" but she had in fact grown up with a lot of "other types of beauty."
Speaking on 'The Today Show' on Tuesday (20.09.22), she said: "Even the whole body thing was such a thing. It was like, everybody was like size zero models, tall, blonde — beautiful, a certain type of beauty — but there was other types of beauty that I grew up with."
Tagged in Ben Affleck Jennifer Lopez