Jennifer Lopez has recalled sitting with her father as tears were “gushing down” her face amid a low point during her divorce from Ben Affleck.
The actress spoke candidly about the challenging period during an interview with her Office Romance co-star Brett Goldstein on his podcast, Films To Be Buried With, this week.
Describing the film that “changed [her] perspective” and made her “see the world in a new way”, Lopez, 56, highlighted the Oscar-winning Brazilian biopic, I’m Still Here, which she watched with her father just months after her 2024 split from Affleck.
“A couple years ago, I got really sick around Christmas time. My family was in town. My dad, my mum, my cousin, everybody,” she told Goldstein, adding that her father [David] had agreed to watch the movie with her.
“I think because I was sick. And at that time of my life, I was going through a divorce and thinking a lot about my kids,” Lopez said.
“As you do when something like that happens in your life, [we watched a movie].
“My dad was sitting there and something happened in my head and I just started crying, where I started calculating all of the things with my kids, my experience with my dad, like everything happened just all at once.
“My whole family knew I was going through a hard time … He turns around and he sees my face. I was trying to cry quietly — when you try to cry quietly, then it’s like all the tears, it’s like water gushing down my face.”
After her father asked what was wrong, the pair shared a sweet moment, which Lopez said helped “heal” her.
“[It] healed a part of me that needed to be healed to kind of move on from that part of my life and from those types of relationships in my life. So that movie changed me and helped me grow,” she said.
Lopez filed for divorce from Affleck in August 2024, following reports they’d quietly split earlier that year.
The couple had ended their first engagement in 2004 but reunited in 2021 to give it another shot, and got married a year later.
Meanwhile, rumours are currently swirling that Lopez and Goldstein, 45, enjoyed a brief fling after filming Office Romance together, which has just been released.
A source told Page Six recently that the pair “kept things professional on set while filming but their chemistry was undeniable.”
“They tried to keep things low-key during the months while filming but flirted here and there on set, and they definitely had a strong connection,” the insider said.
“Everyone saw them getting very cozy together at the wrap party and it was obvious they were into each other.”
And once filming wrapped, “they were free to take things further and dated for quite some time,” the source claimed, although the relationship eventually tapered off.
“They liked spending time together and Brett made her happy. But things just sort of fizzled out between them since last year.”