Jennifer Lopez

Jennifer Lynn Lopez, born July 24, 1969, in The Bronx, New York, to Puerto Rican parents from Ponce, is one of the most successful and multi-faceted Latin entertainers in the history of American popular culture, an actress, recording artist, dancer, producer, and entrepreneur whose simultaneous dominance of the music charts, the box office, and the fashion industry in the late 1990s and 2000s was unprecedented and whose career longevity and commercial power remain extraordinary in her sixth decade. Growing up in the Castle Hill neighborhood of the Bronx in a Catholic Puerto Rican family — her parents David and Guadalupe met while both working in a day care center and eventually moved the family to a middle-class neighborhood in the Bronx — Lopez demonstrated a fierce competitiveness and drive from an early age, taking dance lessons from the age of five and pursuing a career in entertainment over her parents' initial objections. She broke into the entertainment industry as a Fly Girl dancer on the comedy sketch series In Living Color (1990-1993), developing her television profile before transitioning into acting. Her film career accelerated rapidly through Money Train (1995), Jack (1996), Selena (1997) — her breakthrough biographical portrayal of slain Tejano music queen Selena Quintanilla-Perez — Blood and Wine (1996), and Out of Sight (1998), in which her chemistry with George Clooney generated enormous critical attention and established her as a leading actress. She simultaneously launched a music career with the debut album On the 6 (1999), which produced the massive number-one single If You Had My Love, and J.Lo (2001), which made her the first artist in history to have an album and film simultaneously debut at number one, a milestone that secured her place in cultural history.