Jennifer Lopez Once Said She Did ‘Hustlers’ for Free
Jennifer Lopez famously played the veteran pole dancer Ramona Vega in the 2019 movie Hustlers. She had a good feeling about the project as soon as she laid her eyes on its script — so much so that she was willing to take a massive pay cut to help see the project come to fruition.
Jennifer Lopez banked on herself for ‘Hustlers’
Lopez often commands high salaries for her starring roles. Reports indicate that she rakes in tens of millions of dollars per movie, which contributes to her massive net worth. However, Lopez experienced several occasions where she willingly lowered her pay significantly for a project she was passionate about. When she did Hustlers, landing her role in the movie may have been the true reward for the actor.
“I do things because I love them. I didn’t get paid a whole bunch of money for Hustlers,” Lopez once told GQ. “I did it for free and produced it. I bank on myself. That’s the ‘Jenny From the Block.’ I do what I want, I do what I love.”
Lopez had already been involved with Hustlers for years as a producer. When it came time to finally adapt the article that inspired the film, Lorene Scafaria directed and wrote the project. During the process, Scafaria felt Lopez was the only actor who made sense to play Ramona.
“I didn’t write the script with anyone in mind. But when we opened it, it felt so obvious: Ramona had to be Jennifer Lopez, or Jennifer and to be Ramona,” Scafaria once told Screen Rant. “There was no second choice that I could even imagine at that point. So we went straight for Jennifer. Fortunately, her producing partner loved the script and sent it to Jen, and she loved the script, so we met. We really hit it off and just had all the same ideas in mind for why we were excited about the story and the character. The joy of seeing her in something dangerous.”
Jennifer Lopez almost turned down ‘Hustlers’ for her family
Lopez’s role in Hustlers almost didn’t come to be. At the time, she had just begun to settle into a stable family life with her ex-boyfriend, Alex Rodriguez. The Wedding Planner star was reluctant to disrupt the peace they shared.
“There were times in my life when my life when my career was going great, and my personal life was going OK. And there were times my personal life was stable, but my career was not great. This is the first time where I have a really beautiful alignment between the two,” she once told Variety. “I think Alex brought that for me. I love it. We have a beautiful life.”
Because of this, Hustlers couldn’t have come around at a worse time for the actor.
“We were supposed to do it last summer, and I had worked so much,” Lopez said. “I was like, ‘I have to stay home with my kids and Alex.’ ”
But Scafaria was willing to delay production on the movie to accommodate Lopez’s schedule.
Jennifer Lopez felt she should’ve been nominated for an Oscar for ‘Hustlers’
Lopez experienced some of the best reviews in her career thanks to Hustlers, which was as commercially successful as it was critically. The movie generated significant Oscar buzz during its peak, but not enough to secure an Oscar nomination. Lopez admitted to being disappointed that the Academy didn’t recognize the movie.
“I was sad; I was a little sad because there was a lot of buildup to it,” Lopez once said according to The Hollywood Reporter. “There were so many articles, I got so many good notices — more than ever in my career — and there was a lot of ‘She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar’ … ‘It’s going to happen’ … ‘If it doesn’t, you’re crazy.’ I’m reading all the articles going, ‘Oh, my God, could this happen?’ And then it didn’t and I was, like, ‘Ouch,’ it was a little bit of a letdown.”
But her loss helped Lopez realize that she didn’t need an Oscar nomination to legitimize her work.
“You want people to say you did a good job, and I realized, ‘No, you don’t need that; you do this because you love it,’” she added. “I don’t need this award right here to tell me that I am enough.”
