JENNIFER LOPEZ

The icon is standing in her power and aiming to do everything the men can do.

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IN A BLACK HOODIE, HER CARAMEL hair corralled into a ballerina bun, Jennifer Lopez is giving her dancers a priceless piece of advice. "Part of being a great performer is being aware," she tells them. That moment, from her documentary Halftime-which narrates her progress toward her 2020 Super Bowl performance with Shakira-crystallizes who she is as an actress, too.

Lopez began her multipronged career, of course, as a dancer, and acting, for her, always starts "in the body," she says. "Blocking a scene is choreography; even looping is choreography." When she's preparing for a role, she thinks about movement before anything else: "the walk of the character, the way they use their hands, the way they choose to move from one place to the other." That could mean mastering the thighbruising art of pole dancing, as she did for her role in Hustlers, or sleeping in Selena Quintanilla's actual bed while studying to play her in Selena. Whatever it is, she commits-hard. That's the JLo promise: You're going to see her sweat, and you're going to be riveted.

In a town that insists on effortlessness, Lopez was always unapologetic about showing her work. But she had to learn to advocate for herself. When she started out in Hollywood, she had a just-happy-to-be-here mentality. As her cred grew, she remembers "having to fight for different roles" as a Latina, "to be a lead in a romantic comedy-to not play the maid or the housekeeper."