Jennifer Lopez‘s documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told debuted on Tuesday.
The 54-year-old actress let fans see deep inside her inner turmoil she has battled since a child growing up in the Bronx.
At the heart of the documentary and the accompanying musical movie also released – titled This Is Me… Now – is Lopez’s demons.
Her biggest issue is as a middle child – she has two sisters, Leslie and Lynda – she did not get enough love, which caused her to turn into a very hard worker so she would get noticed.
‘I wasn’t the oldest and I wasn’t the youngest, I was in the middle,’ she says with regret.
And Jennifer also brought up it was hard having a ‘narcissistic’ mother who was ‘the life of the party’ and an absentee dad who worked all night and slept all day. He was employed as a computer technician.
Her parents Guadalupe Rodriguez and David Lopez did not appear in the documentary though they were seen in flashback photos.
+49
View gallery
Jennifer Lopez ‘s documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told debuted on Tuesday. The actress let fans see deep inside her inner turmoil she has battled since a child growing up in the Bronx
+49
View gallery
At the heart of the documentary and the accompanying musical movie also released – titled This Is Me… Now – is Lopez’s demons. Seen last week in LA
+49
View gallery
Her biggest issue is as a middle child – she has two sisters – she did not get enough love, which caused her to turn into a very hard worker so she would get noticed. Seen with Leslie and Lynda in 2005
+49
View gallery
+49
View gallery
And Jennifer also brought up it was hard having a ‘narcissistic’ mother who was ‘the life of the party’ and an absentee dad who worked all night and slept all day
+49
View gallery
Lopez and her father David Lopez in the 00s
It is surprising she would remark her mother is a narcissist – a personality disorder that is often viewed as unflattering – as she spends a lot of time with her.
Lopez has addressed her mother’s over-the-top personality before in a previous documentary, Halftime from 2022.
‘My mom is a super complicated woman and she carries a lot of baggage, she wanted us to be independent and never have to rely on a man,’ said Jennifer.
And the star also said that her mother beat her: ‘She did what she had to do to survive, and it made her strong, but it also made her tough.
‘She beat the s**t out of us.’
They also fought about Jenny going to college: ‘I didn’t want to go to college — I wanted to try dance full time. So she and I had a break,’ she told W magazine. ‘I started sleeping on the sofa in the dance studio. I was homeless, but I told her, “This is what I have to do.”‘
Jennifer appears to be close to her father David, who is divorced from Guadalupe and has remarried.
+49
View gallery
Lopez performs with her mom, Guadalupe at the Vax Live concert at SoFi Stadium in 2021
During Father’s Day last year Jennifer shared a post for her dad saying, ‘Daddy, I love you.’ He replied, ‘Thank you, sweetheart, I love you more.’
In 2016 she gushed about her father while on the Today show noting that he ‘encouraged’ her and always expressed how ‘proud’ he was of her accomplishments.
‘I feel like he’s always been proud since I was like running track when I was 9 or 10 years old,’ she told host Hoda Kotb. ‘He was like, “My daughter runs track!”… It just didn’t matter to him. He was just proud of me.’
Most of the documentary was about finding true love.
After three failed marriages and years of therapy, she worked on trying to love herself, which is really the message of these films.
+49
View gallery
Guadalupe and Max when Lopez was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Los Angeles in 2013
+49
View gallery
With her dad David, who used to work as a computer technician, also at the Walk of Fame
+49
View gallery
David with his second wife at NUVOtv Network Launch Party in Los Angeles in 2013
She even admitted that at times she did not ‘think much of myself’ and it was hard to get over that.
Husband Ben Affleck also shares that there are not enough ‘likes’ on social media to heal that pain and Jennifer had to do the work herself.
He also mentioned lightly his own battle with alcohol as he said there is not enough alcohol in all the liquor stores in the world to take care of inner pain and the hard work had to be done.
The Hustlers actress breaks down in tears many times during the documentary.
At one point she sobs over not being able to join ben on his press tour.
She says she feels like she works very hard only to just do an OK job – and that includes her career, marriage and kids. She has 16-year-old twins Max and Emme with ex-husband Marc Anthony,
+49
View gallery
She has stayed close with her siblings; seen at the Gucci Children’s Collection event in 2010 in Beverly Hills
Luckily Ben was able to prop her up and tell her she is a real talent which helped improve her self-confidence.
She said: ‘What he said and what he saw in me, and what he made me believe about myself, only comes from love.’
She added, through tears, ‘Because nobody else could have made me see that about myself. It’s very moving.
‘Because I didn’t think much about myself and so the world didn’t think much of me. That lined up.’
Jennifer, 54, and Ben, 51, were famously engaged in the early 2000s before breaking up, only to reunite – and later marry – in July 2022.
Jennifer also spoke about how Ben served as her muse for her new album and she had her team read handwritten love letters from Ben that inspired the record.
+49
View gallery
Her pal Jane Fonda , whom she met on the set of Monster-in-Law, had a cameo in her movie and is seen in the documentary telling Jennifer she hopes it works with Ben after adding JLo is indeed ‘thirsty,’ which makes the dancer laugh. Seen in 2011
She said: ‘We’re totally different people now and we’re the same and we have the same love 100 percent. Like I’d never fallen out of love with you. I had to just put it over here.’
Her crew member then responded: ‘It seems like it’s liberating in a sense because he loves every part of you but it’s not dependent on what this album is or anything.’
The couple’s love story started in 2002 when they dated while filming the movie Jersey Girl. They became engaged the following year but broke up in 2004.
Yet it was meant to be for the couple, known collectively as Bennifer, who found their way back to one another in July 2021, marrying just one year later.
They detailed the highs and lows of their rekindled romance in Jennifer’s new documentary, with Ben revealed he initially asked his wife to keep their relationship offline when they decided to give things another ago.
+49
View gallery
The hitmaker became emotional in the documentary as she spoke about her husband and how he has helped improve her self-confidence
+49
View gallery
She said: ‘What he said and what he saw in me, and what he made me believe about myself, only comes from love’
+49
View gallery
They are seen at home having fun together as they playfully bicker
+49
View gallery
The couple’s love story started in 2002 (pictured) when they dated while filming the movie Jersey Girl. They became engaged the following year but broke up in 2004
While navigating their reconciliation, two decades following their first engagement, the two-time Oscar winner admitted he had zero interest in becoming a fixture on his wife’s social media accounts.
‘Getting back together, I said, Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,’ the actor recalled.
‘Then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like, you’re gonna marry a boat captain and you go, “Well, I don’t like the water.”‘
He continued: ‘We’re just two people with different kinds of approaches trying to learn to compromise.’
Ultimately, Jennifer respected his wishes, and has only posted a small handful of snaps featuring him, including a raunchy shirtless photo last Father’s Day and a sweet video of them singing Sam Cooke’s (What A) Wonderful World in the car on his birthday.
During the documentary, the mother-of-two acknowledged Ben’s discomfort with stepping in the spotlight as a couple after facing intense media scrutiny when they first dated between 2002 and 2004.
‘I don’t think [Ben] is very comfortable with me doing all of this,’ she said. ‘But he loves me, he knows I’m an artist, and he’s gonna support me in every way he can because he knows you can’t stop me from making the music I made… he doesn’t want to stop me. But that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable being the muse.’
+49
View gallery
She shared that ‘we both have PTSD’ from their initial dating experience, but explained that in their present life as a married couple they’re ‘older’ and ‘wiser’ (pictured in 2003)
+49
View gallery
At the end of the docu she says she hopes she is a good mother to her twins Max and Emme, 16
She said of their reunion: ‘We’re totally different people now and we’re the same and we have the same love 100 percent. Like I’d never fallen out of love with you. I had to just put it over here.’
The couple got engaged near the end of 2002 but broke the engagement in late 2003 before ending their relationship entirely in 2004.
In the intervening years, Jennifer married and divorced her third ex-husband Marc Anthony, with whom she welcomed her twins Max and Emme.
Meanwhile, Ben married and divorced Jennifer Garner, with whom he amicably co-parents three children – Violet, 18, Seraphina, 14, and Samuel, 11.
Also in the documentary, her pal Jane Fonda, whom she met on the set of Monster-in-Law, had a cameo in her movie and is seen in the documentary telling Jennifer she hopes it works with Ben after adding JLo is indeed ‘thirsty,’ which makes the dancer laugh.
