Jennifer Lopez on How She Considered Stripping in Her Early Dancing Days
Hustlers showcased Jennifer Lopez’s acting and dancing skills. It might not be a total surprise to fans that she’s good at dancing given she did that professionally before she had a music career.
Lopez opened up about the early days in her dance career. Find out what she said about once considering stripping for more money and more.
Jennifer Lopez said learning to pole dance for ‘Hustlers’ was hard
The actress started out as a professional dancer on In Living Color and work with artists like Janet Jackson. She still said learning how to pole dance for Hustlers was hard.
“It’s tough,” Lopez told Entertainment Weekly. “My shoulder and back are still recovering.” She went through “stripper boot camp” and trained with Johanna Sapakie.
“I have danced all my life and I work out every single day,” Lopez said. “And I can say without hesitation that learning to pole dance was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.”
The actress also watched exotic dancers to further understand the part. ” I not only watched the ladies do their routines, I talked to them about what it was like to have a career as a dancer,” she said. “I think it would surprise people that most of these women are students, or young moms just trying to get by in a world that doesn’t offer those on the fringe many chances.”
Lopez would do small things to stay in character
Lopez played Ramona and there were small changes made to create the character. Ramona has a facial piercing and a tattoo on her wrist. She also carried around a lighter and cup.
The actress revealed how the props helped her stay in character on set. Lopez told Vanity Fair “There was a blinged-out lighter that I would hold every day,” that helped her. “Sometimes I would smoke one of the cigarettes or something and just kind of stay in the mind-set of Ramona.”
She also said the character’s “blingy cup” was what she used as a water bottle. The actress previously used this kind of cup before the role while she was on tour.
She did consider stripping early in her career
Lopez is a professional dancer and got to use that for her role. However, there was a time when she considered stripping for money in the past.
“I did,” she told W magazine. “There was a moment in my life when my friends, who were also dancers, told me about making thousands of dollars at clubs in New Jersey.”
She continued, “They said, ‘You won’t need to be topless.’ It sounded awfully good when I was broke and eating pizza every day, but I never did it.”
The actress isn’t broke now but did take some financial risk in making Hustlers. She claimed she didn’t take a salary as an actress to make the movie. It looks like her training has paid off giving its critical acclaim and that partially has to do with the dancing scenes that had to be set up like stunts.
