Jennifer Lopez Was Once the Only Woman This Director Would Cast in an Action Movie
Jennifer Lopez wasn’t just known for her romcoms and dramas. She carved out a nice career for herself in action films as well. So much so that this filmmaker only saw Lopez as believable in the genre.
Jennifer Lopez impressed a well-known action director
Lopez made a career starring in thrillers and action features. She burst into the movie scene with action flicks like Money Train. She further proved herself capable of headlining her own action movies like Enough.
Her performances in the genre helped catch the attention of filmmaker John Woo, who was known for some of his exciting, adrenaline-fueled work such as Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2. He’d also worked with Lopez’s ex-boyfriend Ben Affleck in Paycheck.
Woo might’ve paid Lopez the highest compliment he could’ve by speaking about her legitimacy as an action star.
“I would love to do a film with John Woo. I think that would be amazing and it’s funny because he said the same thing. He said, ‘Jennifer Lopez is the only woman I think I can do an action movie with.’ I don’t know what he saw me in, maybe an old film on TV or something. Right now he’s not doing any action films, but I told him to let’s do something together. Let’s think about it. Try to remember that,” Lopez once said, according to Black Film.
How Jennifer Lopez felt about still doing action movies in her 50s
Lopez hasn’t slowed down in her more mature years. An argument can even be made that she’s starting to ramp it up. She recently starred in one of her most unique projects yet with the Netflix movie Atlas.
Atlas was an entirely original film in which Lopez played a data analyst who pursued a rogue robot. But to Lopez, it wasn’t just any ordinary action piece. Speaking with Space, Lopez recalled how the story brought her to tears because of its emotional weight.
“Honestly, the first time I read the script, it was during the pandemic, and I sobbed,” Lopez said. “I literally called my producing partner, and she was like, ‘What’s the matter?’ At the core of it there was a really emotional story about two entities, a person and an AI, who become more human together, where they go on this journey and she has to learn how to trust.”
But while doing Atlas, Lopez treated the sci-fi flick as a milestone in her career.
“It’s funny that at this point, in my career, you’d think I’d do all these action movies when I was in my 20s,” she once told Associated Press.
Being able to still headline an action flick in her 50s, however, meant a lot to Lopez.
“That is really kind of, I think, incredibly inspiring for myself. And groundbreaking that Netflix or any big studio would go, ‘Yeah, that’s the person we want in this role right now.’ It says a lot how things are kind of progressing in a different way,” she added.
