Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Jennifer Lopez was sending a romantic message to husband Ben Affleck when she featured The Way We Were in her new film, This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.
“That’s one of mine and Ben’s favorite movies,” Lopez, 54, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published on Friday, February 16. “We watched it 20 years ago. I actually showed it to him when we were together last time.”
In the narrative-driven musical, Lopez watches the 1973 tearjerker starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, repeating the lines back to herself as she cries over a past heartbreak. Lopez told EW that incorporating the emotional moment was “special” to her — plus she has a lot of love for the movie’s lead actress.
“I’m a huge Barbra Streisand fan,” she said. “My mother really imparted [this movie] to me. That was her favorite romantic movie growing up. So it has a lot of significance for me.”
This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, which premiered on Prime Video Friday, is a fictionalized portrayal of Lopez’s life over the past 20 years in tandem with her new album of the same name. The story follows Lopez as she overcomes a series of bad relationships and blossoms into a place of self-love before being reunited with The One, inspired by her life after her 2002 split from Affleck, before the pair rekindled their romance nearly two decades later.
The Way We Were isn’t the only classic musical that gets a shoutout in This Is Me … Now. Lopez also pays homage to Singin’ in the Rain during the final moments of the film with a solo dance number during a stormy night in New York City.
“I love musicals. I always have,” she told the outlet. “It’s funny, I wanted to do something in the rain. I didn’t want to make it Singin’ in the Rain I wanted to dance with the hummingbird in the rain, and it came out like, ‘Oh, it’s like Singin’ In the Rain. I am singing and dancing in the rain.”
‘The Way We Were’ Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
Lopez noted that “everything” she’s done in her life was woven into the film. “Whether it’s romantic comedies and dramas, growing up on musical theater and in the MTV generation and the golden age of music videos and putting stuff out at that time — all of it’s in here,” she explained. “Everything about me. I’ve never done a project where I got to use everything about myself personally and professionally in one project.”
While This Is Me … Now: A Love Story recalls Lopez’s time away from Affleck, the album serves as a follow-up to her 2002 record, This Is Me … Then, which was inspired by the pair’s relationship and subsequent 2002 breakup.
After their split, Lopez went on to marry Marc Anthony, and the exes share twins Max and Emme. She later moved on with Alex Rodriguez, but the twosome called it quits in March 2021 after four years together. Affleck, for his part, welcomed kids Violet, Seraphina and Samuel with ex-wife Jennifer Garner before their 2018 divorce.
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck‘s relationship inspired her 2002 hit “Dear Ben,” and their romance provided even more inspiration when it was rekindled two decades later. The couple were first linked in the early 2000s, with Lopez confirming their engagement to Diane Sawyer in November 2002. The twosome eventually called off their wedding in early […]
Lopez and Affleck rekindled their romance in July 2021 and tied the knot one year later. During a February appearance on Australia’s “Kyle and Jackie O Radio Show,” Lopez said that she needed to “figure herself out” after her split from Affleck and never expected they would come back together.
“I fell in love with the love of my life [earlier in life] and for whatever reasons, we needed to grow and do other things,” she said. “We both went off and had children with other people and other relationships, but you know in my mind I kind of had it like, ‘Oh, that was kind of the one.’”