“I don’t know, baby,” murmurs Jennifer Lopez, arching into a feline stretch. “I kinda like to be by the ocean – but you decide.” It’s the end of our shoot and I’m about to sit down with one of the planet’s most powerful stars. As the 44-year-old actress, singer and multi-billion-rand entrepreneur moves to a quiet corner of the Hollywood studio, after swapping designer dresses for a white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, I get to observe one of the world’s most gossiped-about relationships.
She and her boyfriend Casper Smart, 27, are discussing a forthcoming break. She listens as he details his ideas, before gently giving some of her own. There’s little doubt that if Jennifer wants to be “by the ocean”, that’s where they’ll be, but you’ve got to admire the work. When power so clearly lies with her, it must be fun to occasionally pretend that it doesn’t.
A bottle of water is placed before her and a heavy shuts the door to “give us some privacy”. With so many ‘yes’ men around, does she like to take a backseat in her personal life? “Not at all,” she says. “The dream is a balance where you feel you could relinquish control from time to time and still be taken care of. It’s about enough good stuff to outweigh the bad, because nobody’s perfect, right? But without the spark that conflict brings, life would be boring. I want a bit of chaos in the relationship, but I also want a bit of safety and order.”
The first time I interviewed Jennifer, I was surprised by how quickly she opened up about her love life. And we still move easily on to the subject. She and Casper have had a two-year relationship and the thrice-divorced mother of six-year-old twins Emme and Max seems clear about what she wants.
“It’s taken a long time to get to this place, but I don’t ever want to go against my own integrity in a relationship,”
Check out the full story in the April issue of GLAMOUR – on sale Monday, 24 March!
