Jennifer Lopez makes dramatic revelation in documentary about her childhood: I didn’t have enough love
In the documentary ‘The Greatest Love Story Ever’ the dramatic rise to fame of the Puerto Rico-born actress and singer was revealed.
The documentary ‘Jennifer Lopez The Greatest Love Story Ever Told’ premiered this Tuesday. The 54-year-old actress decided to show her followers the deepest inner conflicts she had to face to reach fame, having had a very hard childhood in the Bronx.
The singer also made a dramatic revelation about her personal relationship with her parents: claiming she did not receive enough love, forcing her to choose to become a hard-working woman to get attention and gain the approval of her parents: Guadalupe Rodriguez and David Lopez.
“I wasn’t the oldest or the youngest, I was in the middle,” she explained and detailed that she grew up with a “narcissistic mother” who felt she was “the life of the party,” while her father was emotionally absent because he worked all night and slept all day as a computer technician.
Her parents do not appear in the documentary, but when they are mentioned, photographs of them are shown. This revelation from JLo about her mother is surprising, given they share a close relationship.
JLo’s emotional problems with her mother
JLo had revealed some details about her troubled relationship with her mother during a previous documentary, ‘Halftime’ from 2022:
“My mom is a super complicated woman and carries a lot of baggage, she wanted us to be independent and never have to depend on a man.”
But she also brought to light that her mother beat her: “She did what she had to do to survive, and that made her strong, but it also made her tough. She beat us up.”
They also discussed the problem with her being allowed to go to college: “She didn’t want to go to college; she wanted to try to dance full time. So, she and I had a break. I started sleeping on the couch in the dance studio. I was homeless, but I told her, ‘This is what I have to do,'” JLo revealed to W magazine.
Regarding her relationship with her father, the actress also said that they have a close relationship, despite the fact her parents divorced and he remarried. She backed up that claim by sharing a post to congratulate her dad for Father’s Day last year, writing: “Dad, I love you”.
He replied: “Thank you, honey, I love you more”. In 2016, she also talked about her relationship with her father during an appearance on the Today show and noted that “he encouraged her” and always expressed how “proud” he was of her achievements.
“I feel like he’s always been proud since I was running track when I was 9 or 10 years old. He was like, ‘My daughter runs track!’…He just didn’t care. He was just proud of me.”
Most of JLo‘s new documentary talks about how she overcame those emotional shortcomings from her childhood to find true love, after overcoming three failed marriages and years of therapy.
Having been on a path to learn to love herself, she even acknowledged that with her family background “I didn’t think much of myself” and that her lack of self-esteem was very difficult to overcome.
