On December 5, the IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best films. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers behind films well worth toasting. We’re showcasing their work with new interviews leading up to the Los Angeles event.
It’s incredibly apt for Jennifer Lopez to end one of the most turbulent years of her life both professionally and personally with a film titled “Unstoppable.” Beaming onto Zoom from London the morning after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the actress was a beacon of positivity discussing the story of Anthony Robles and his mother Judy (whom she plays in the film,) and how his determination to become a college wrestling champion despite his disability encouraged Judy to find a new lease of life.
“Each interview we do and each Q&A, as I get to sit next to Judy and Anthony, I’m not letting the moment go by of looking at them and marveling at this great opportunity that God has given me to be part of this story and just the privilege and timing of everything, to be able to listen to Anthony speak because he’s such an inspirational and powerful motivational speaker,” she told IndieWire. “It never ceases to amaze me how blessed I am to do what I do, and the rooms that I get to sit in, and the people that I get to meet, and the art that I get to create, which fulfills my life in a way that makes everything worthwhile.”
Speaking to why she initially signed onto the supporting role in the Amazon MGM Studios release, the Puerto Rican icon said, “I liked that it was an inspirational Latino story about this Latino family and this incredible kid who overcame the odds. But once I met Judy, I realized there was so much more there, and I met Anthony, there was so much more of an inspirational story there to be told between the two of them.”
Lopez added, “On the surface, you wouldn’t think of a mom of five who had a baby when she was 16, and the son was born with only one leg, and who struggled in this marriage for 20 years, to become this inspirational character. But it makes it all the more inspirational because of the everyday struggles that she had.”
After having a child young, rather than having that dampen her career aspirations, “what wound up happening is that it was almost like because of him, she became so much more than she ever thought she probably would have been without him,” said the actress of Robles. “And that to me is the heart and soul of the film for both of them, is their relationship and how they inspired each other.”
On Thursday, December 5, Lopez will receive the Maverick Award at IndieWire Honors Winter 2024. While her interpretation of the word “maverick” comes with the standard idea of it being “somebody who doesn’t follow the crowd, who is not afraid to march to the beat of their own drum, blaze their own trail, go where other people kind of haven’t gone before,” Lopez specifies that those qualities should not necessarily define someone as “fearless.” Instead, a maverick “will face the fear and do things anyway. And I think that is something that I relate to,” she said. “When I started in this business, it wasn’t that I wasn’t afraid or nervous or scared—I was—but I did it anyway.”
Lopez is appreciative of how her drive to express herself as an actress, singer, and dancer, has always outweighed those fears, and though it has led her to many successes, from “Selena” to “Hustlers,” it has also come with times where something she has put her heart and soul (and money) into, like her visual album “This Is Me… Now” and its accompanying documentary “The Greatest Love Story Never Told” from this spring, did not hit in the way she intended.
“My mission as an artist is to put love out there, whether it’s music or films, or anything that I create myself, and ‘This Is Me…Now’ was no different in that way,” she said. “It didn’t really matter how it got out there, if I had to do it all by myself. It was something that I really felt I wanted to do.” Though it did not launch into the summer music tour she had planned, Lopez says she is still receiving frequent messages, long letters, and even little hummingbirds from fans that have been moved by the multimedia project. “And that’s why you do it.”
Even a challenging summer, where she dealt with divorce and social media ribbing, included some real wins for Lopez, whether her hit Netflix film “Atlas” once again proving her to be one of streaming era’s most valuable players, or “Unstoppable” receiving a standing ovation at its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
“There’s going to be things that are huge commercial successes, and there’s going to be things that are super critically acclaimed, and then there’s going to be things that are mixed, and then there are going to be things that people don’t like. But at the end of the day, none of that really matters as an artist,” said Lopez. “What matters is that you put out something truthful into the world that you felt compelled to do, and it has that intention behind it. And for that, to me, it’s already a success. And it’s only reinforced when people come up to you and tell you that it’s changed their life in some way or it affected their life in some way.”
Ultimately, 2024 has brought the pioneering entertainer a new perspective. “Sometimes the world makes you stop, it forces you to take a seat. And I was happy that that happened this year for me because I don’t know that I would’ve ever done that. And I’ve tried over the past few years to slow down,” said Lopez. “You come back with a new appreciation and a new kind of energy for what you do.”
Up next for the actress is the titular role in the long-awaited film adaptation of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Bill Condon. “That is an important, beautiful story with a beautiful message about love and acceptance no matter what. And it’s going to be a very impactful film. So I’m excited for people to see that,” said Lopez. “It was my first musical, probably since [‘Selena’], if you consider ‘Selena’ a musical. But this was a proper musical where I really get to play three different characters in a way. And so it was a huge project for me.”
Ending on a positive note, the triumphant triple threat, whose acting career seems ever-evolving even after three decades in the spotlight, agrees “I really do feel like the best is yet to come.”
“Unstoppable,” an Amazon MGM Studios release, will be in select theaters starting December 6, 2024, and arrive on Prime Video on January 16, 2025.
