Jennifer Lopez never forgot where she came from, and even visited her old home in the Bronx long after she made it in Hollywood. It was clear that although she moved out of her neighborhood, she took a little bit of the Bronx with her on her path to superstardom. And it was her roots that ultimately helped the Maid in Manhattan star navigate the business.

Why being from the Bronx was very important for Jennifer Lopez

Lopez felt like she owed much of her career success to her upbringing in the Bronx. Growing up, she lived a very modest middle-class lifestyle thanks to her hardworking parents. Her father was a computer technician who she got her superpower-like work ethic from. Meanwhile, Lopez’s mother wore many hats, which included Tupperware sales and teaching.

“Growing up in the Bronx really did shape me because I grew up with not a lot,” she once said in an interview with E! News. “Everything about me, my kind of grit, I’ve never thought about it or described it this way before, but it is the heartbeat inside of me that is the Bronx and my upbringing that continues to drive me.”

After she moved to Los Angeles, she soon realized that the Bronx helped her thrive in Hollywood in a way that her contemporaries couldn’t. The same authenticity she inherited from New York made her stand out in an industry that once valued originality.

‘I always said that when I went out to Hollywood, it was the fact that I was from the Bronx that helped me. It was that I was so different from everyone out there that separated me, and it became my biggest strength,” Lopez said in an interview with Vogue. “That is why throughout my career, I am always Jenny from the Block, I’m real. It is important to me, it is who I am, it is that blood that pumps through your vein, it makes you hungry to remember that you had nothing, and then to want more.”

Her Bronx roots also helped Lopez handle confrontation well and speak her mind.

“I definitely have had to pull out the Bronx on people at the times when they are not correct and not being respectful in the way that they should [be] to a young lady,” she said.

Jennifer Lopez hated Los Angeles when she first moved out of the Bronx

Lopez learned the hard way that Los Angeles was an entirely different city than the Bronx. She made the transition to the West Coast at an early age, a decision that later helped catapult her career. Her move to California also came after a heated argument between Lopez and her family. Her mom thought pursuing an entertainment career was a mistake. But it didn’t take long for the Unstoppable actor to prove her parents wrong.

“My mom and I butted heads,” Lopez once said in an interview with W. “I didn’t want to go to college—I wanted to try dance full-time. So she and I had a break. I started sleeping on the sofa in the dance studio. I was homeless, but I told her, ‘This is what I have to do.’ A few months later, I landed a job dancing in Europe. When I got back, I booked In Living Color. I became a Fly Girl and moved to L.A. It all happened in a year.”

However, living in Los Angeles took some getting used to first before she learned to love her new home.

“I hated L.A.,” she said. “I was asking, ‘Where’s the store for milk? Don’t you guys walk on the street?’ Now I love Los Angeles, but it doesn’t give me strength the way the Bronx did. All the strength that I needed for life, I got from that neighborhood.”