Jennifer Lopez Looks Back on Ben Affleck Relationship and Box Office Bomb That Was "Gigli"

The actress is still plagued by the bad reviews that she and then-boyfriend Ben Affleck got for their performances in 2003's "Gigli," but, it seems, she has no regrets when it comes to her career.

"I never thought of it as, 'Oh, this is terrible! My career's over!' I just never thought that," she tells The Hollywood Reporter. "I just knew that that movie didn't work and that's all it was, or that relationship didn't work and that's all it was. It wasn't going to end me, personally or professionally."

She adds, "Even later on, after I got married and had kids [she gave birth to twins in 2008] and it was a slow time for me work-wise — I pulled back and I was working on my marriage and I was being a mom and all that — I didn't feel like, 'Oh, what is my life?! Who am I right now?! Am I still that entertainer?' I realized, 'Yeah, you're gonna be even better than you were before. Watch.' Those are the kind of talks that I had with myself."

The pop star's career clearly has bounced back. Not only does she have a thriving singing career, but she also became a staple as a judge on "American Idol" from 2011-2016. But with that success came rumors of her "diva" behavior, which she adamantly denies.

"With reality TV, you can't really hide who you are, it's gonna come out," she tells the mag. "I always felt like, 'People know who I am, they know I'm a nice person,' but it's not like that because a lot of people believe everything they read."

"I think they only knew me from my records and my videos and my movies, which are playing a character, and what the press said about me, and the press was never really favorable to me — I don't know why," she continues. "At times they were, when the work was good, but there was a lot of tabloid fodder about my relationships; there was a lot of rumors about my, you know, 'diva-like behavior,' which was totally untrue; and I just carried this stigma with me."

Lopez also opens up about the pitfalls of fame, admitting that it's hard to deal with a life in the spotlight now that she's getting older.

"As I get older it bothers me more," she declares. "When you're young it's like a shock at first, and you kind of have anxiety about it, but then you get used to that life and it just becomes your normal life. And now? I think when I had kids and stuff, I was like — I wanted a little more freedom to go outside and not have them have to deal with that part of it."

Part of her mass appeal is that J.Lo has always encouraged fans to embrace their curves. Her role in "Selena" introduced audiences to her voluptuous look, which was rarely seen on screen before then.

"In traditional movies, that wasn't the figure unless you were playing, like, the femme fatale or the bombshell or something like that. You couldn't be the serious lead," she says. "We kind of broke that mold."