Jennifer Lopez opened up about the moment she broke down crying while watching a movie with her family amid her separation from Ben Affleck.
The 56-year-old confessed that she sobbed during the movie I’m Still Here, while talking to her Office Romance co-star Brett Goldstein on his podcast Films to be Buried With.
The On The Floor singer said the Oscar-winning Brazilian biopic is the movie that changed her perspective on life and the world.
“A couple years ago, I got really sick around Christmas time,” she told Goldstein. “My family was in town. My dad, my mom, my cousin, everybody.”
She went on the explain that her father, David, is “not a sit-down movie guy. My mum [Guadalupe] was all about movies, entertainment, musicals, the whole thing, I got all of that from her.”
However, she said her dad agreed to watch I’m Still Here with her, “I think because I was sick,” she added.
“At that time of my life, I was going through a divorce and thinking a lot about my kids, as you do when something like that happens in your life.”
The singer, actress and dancer finalised her divorce from actor Ben Affleck in January 2025, three years after tying the knot.
I’m Still Here is based on the true story of Eunice Paiva, whose husband, politician Rubens Paiva, disappeared during the military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985.
“This woman spends her whole life trying to prove that her husband was really – that he didn’t just disappear,” Lopez explained to her co-star through tears.
“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.”
The singer continued, saying: “My whole family knew I was going through a hard time… [my dad] turns around and he sees my face.”
“I was trying to quiet cry quietly – when you try to cry quietly, then it’s like all the tears, it’s like water gushing down my face.”
Her dad then asked her what’s wrong, she explained.
“I said, ‘Dads are so important.’ And he just kind of came over to me and grabbed my face and said, ‘I love you. I always loved you.’ And that kind of changed my life in that moment.”
She added the experience “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.”
After explaining the story, she asked Goldstein through tears if he was “going to cry too.”
“Cry with me! Why are you leaving me all alone?” she joked.
The pair discuss other films Lopez has loved throughout her life, including West Side Story, Flash dance, True Romance, The Notebook and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
Lopez and Goldstein star alongside each other in Netflix’s newest romantic comedy, Office Romance, directed by Ol Parker and co-written by Goldstein.
Jennifer and Ben’s relationship timeline
The couple met on the Gigli set and were first engaged in 2002 but called if their 2003 wedding before splitting in January 2004.
Lopez was married to singer Marc Anthony by the end of 2004, together they had twins Emme and Max before divorcing in 2014. She was later engaged to former MLB star Alex Rodriguez from 2019 to 2021.
Affleck arried actress Jennifer Garner in 2005, with whom he shares three children, Violet, Seraphina, and Samuel, before their 2018 divorce, later dating actress Ana de Armas from 2020 to 2021.
‘Bennifer’ shocked the world when they reunited in April 2021, leading to a surprise Las Vegas wedding in July 2022 and a lavish Georgia ceremony a month later.
After months of separation rumors, Lopez officially filed for divorce on August 20, 2024 (their Georgia anniversary), and they became legally single in early 2025.
