In April 2006, Lopez reappeared on the Billboard Hot 100 as a featured artist on "Control Myself", the lead single from LL Cool J's twelfth studio album Todd Smith. The song peaked at number four on the chart following its release as a music download, making it the pair's second collaboration to reach the top five. Bordertown, a film based on the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez, made its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2006. Lopez, who also acts as the film's producer, stars as Lauren Adrian, an American news reporter for the Chicago Sentinel who wants to be assigned to the Iraq front-lines to cover the war. Bordertown received a direct-to-video release. DanceLife, a reality series following the lives of seven dancers trying to break into the world of professional dance, aired on MTV from January 15 to March 5, 2007. Lopez produced, created and was featured in the show. According to the album's co-producer Estéfano, Lopez's fifth studio album Como Ama una Mujer would "prove critics wrong" with its "big songs that require a voice"; referring to the criticism of Lopez having a "limited" vocal tone. The album's lead single "Qué Hiciste" reached number one on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart. Lopez performed the song on the sixth season of American Idol on April 11, 2007, becoming the first person to perform a Spanish song on the series. The album received the highest first-week sales in the United States for a debut Spanish album and the highest digital sales.
With a cumulative film gross of US$3.1 billion and estimated global sales of 70 million records, Lopez is regarded as the most influential Latin entertainer in the United States. In 2012, Forbes ranked her as the most powerful celebrity in the world, as well as the 38th most powerful woman in the world. Time listed her among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018. Her most successful singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 include: "If You Had My Love", "I'm Real", "Ain't It Funny", "All I Have", and "On the Floor", the lattermost of which is one of the best-selling singles of all time. For her contributions to the recording industry, Lopez has received a landmark star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Billboard Icon Award, and the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award among other honors. Her other ventures include clothing lines, fragrances, the production company Nuyorican Productions, and the nonprofit business Lopez Family Foundation.
More InfoJennifer Lynn Lopez was born on July 24, 1969, in The Bronx borough of New York City, to Puerto Rican parents Guadalupe Rodríguez and David López. She has an older sister, Leslie, and a younger sister, Lynda, a journalist. David worked the night shift at the Guardian Insurance Company before becoming a computer technician at the firm, while Guadalupe was a homemaker. When Lopez was born, the family was living in a small apartment in the Castle Hill neighborhood. A few years later, her parents had saved up enough money to be able to purchase a two-story house, which was considered a big deal for the relatively poor family. At the age of five, Lopez began taking singing and dancing lessons. She toured New York with her school when she was seven years old. Her parents stressed the importance of work ethic and being able to speak English. They encouraged their three daughters to put on performances at home—singing and dancing in front of each other and their friends so that they would stay "out of trouble". Lopez spent her entire academic career in Catholic schools, finishing at Preston High School. In school, Lopez did gymnastics, ran track on a national level, and was a member of the school's softball team. She excelled athletically rather than academically, competing in national track championships.
More InfoAfter placing her career on hiatus, Lopez released her fourth studio album, Rebirth, in February 2005. According to Lopez, Rebirth "came about because I was on such a roller-coaster ride, that was my career from my first album to my last album, and I did a bunch of movie projects in between. I finally took some time just for myself, and [when] I came back, this was the first project I did. I felt like it was a new beginning for me, like I was, in a way, reborn." Tracy Hopkins of NBC's Today Music noted that after "fawning" over Affleck on This Is Me... Then", Lopez "wisely keeps her love life out of the spotlight" on Rebirth and only references her relationship with singer/actor Marc Anthony on a few tracks. The album produced the single "Get Right", which peaked at number one in the United Kingdom. In May, she starred alongside Jane Fonda in the romantic comedy Monster-in-Law, for which she received a salary of $15 million. The film's marketing played up Lopez's "Gigli-and-tabloid tarnished image", and it became a box office success. In August, Lopez starred alongside Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman in An Unfinished Life, a drama film based on the novel of the same name.
More InfoRichard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, writing, "In the hands of director and co-writer James Gray, Ad Astra is one of the most beautiful films of the year, even when it makes little sense and even when Brad Pitt's performance veers between one of his all-time best and one of his all-time not-best." David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film an "A" and said, "Ad Astra is one of the most ruminative, withdrawn, and curiously optimistic space epics this side of Solaris. It's also one of the best." Similarly, Xan Brooks of The Guardian gave the film five out of five stars, called it a "superb space-opera", and praised Pitt's performance, saying, "Pitt embodies McBride with a series of deft gestures and a minimum of fuss. His performance is so understated it hardly looks like acting at all."
More InfoAfter placing her career on hiatus, Lopez released her fourth studio album, Rebirth, in February 2005. According to Lopez, Rebirth "came about because I was on such a roller-coaster ride, that was my career from my first album to my last album, and I did a bunch of movie projects in between. I finally took some time just for myself, and [when] I came back, this was the first project I did. I felt like it was a new beginning for me, like I was, in a way, reborn." Tracy Hopkins of NBC's Today Music noted that after "fawning" over Affleck on This Is Me... Then", Lopez "wisely keeps her love life out of the spotlight" on Rebirth and only references her relationship with singer/actor Marc Anthony on a few tracks. The album produced the single "Get Right", which peaked at number one in the United Kingdom. In May, she starred alongside Jane Fonda in the romantic comedy Monster-in-Law, for which she received a salary of $15 million. The film's marketing played up Lopez's "Gigli-and-tabloid tarnished image", and it became a box office success. In August, Lopez starred alongside Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman in An Unfinished Life, a drama film based on the novel of the same name.
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