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We’ve seen this mistake time and time again, brilliant stars passing on great scripts. Julia Roberts said no to The Blindside, while Emma Watson would also turn down La La Land. That’s just a small snippet of actresses turning down Oscar-worthy roles that they likely regretted.
Jennifer Lopez also falls under this category, as the actress revealed herself that she should not have turned down a certain role.
We’ll take a look at why Lopez said no, and how the project went with Diane Lane taking on the lead in Unfaithful. In addition, we’ll kick things off by taking a closer look at how Lopez’s acting career almost came to an end in 1998.
Jennifer Lopez’s Acting Career Almost Ended After A Terrible Interview With Movieline
Back in 1998, Jennifer Lopez made a bold statement, calling out several of her peers during an interview alongside Movieline. Although the interview turned lots of heads, it did so for all the wrong reasons. Suddenly, Lopez’s status in the world of Hollywood was unclear.
Lopez trashed some of her peers in the interview. She said about Salma Hayek, “We’re in two different realms. She’s a sexy bombshell and those are the kinds of roles she does. I do all kinds of different things.”
“It makes me laugh when she says she got offered Selena, which was an outright lie. If that’s what she does to get herself publicity, then that’s her thing.”
The fiasco would continue, calling Cameron Diaz a ‘lucky model’.
Looking back, Lopez realized it wasn’t her best decision. “I was so misquoted and so taken out of context, and it’s a sore subject for me,” Lopez told Vanity Fair three years later.
“I don’t like to hurt anybody. I don’t like to hurt their feelings. I like to joke, so I do that sometimes. What they wrote in that article hurt people.”
Thankfully for Lopez, her career was able to continue on. However, a few years later, she would have other regrets, turning down a role that almost would lead to an Oscar for Diane Lane.
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Jennifer Lopez Wasn’t Happy With Her Decision To Pass On The Oscar-Nominated Role In Unfaithful
Back in 2002, Unfaithful received stellar reviews and got Oscar buzz, thanks to Diane Lane’s brilliance, portraying the role of Connie Summer. Looking back, Lopez called the romance/thriller the biggest regret of her career.
“There was a movie called Unfaithful. And it was offered to me and the script, for me, wasn’t all the way there. I should have known that [director] Adrian Lyne was going to kill it, but I didn’t.”
Lopez continued, “Diane Lane was so perfect for it, and it was obviously meant to be her, but when I think about that, I want to literally, like, shoot my toe off. I do.”
Lopez got plenty of other opportunities, but this role was one she deeply regretted and had a feeling about. Despite the success of Unfaithful, Diane Lane admitted the shoot itself wasn’t exactly easy.
Diane Lane Thrived In Unfaithful But The Role Was Exhausting
Diane Lane put up an Oscar worthy performance, however, the word behind the scenes was that the shoot was an exhausting one for the entire cast, lasting four months, and not an easy four months.
Two decades after the film’s release, Lane discussed some difficulties during the shoot, including sustaining a brutal neck injury after shooting an intimate scene 50 times.
“So here we are, I’m trying to let the camera see me, and I’m holding him, and I have to come up and kiss him at the same time. I mean, we’ve must’ve done 50 takes. So my neck finally went out. And I didn’t know it till the next day,” Lane tells My Joy Online.
The injury would limit her movement for the rest of the production.
“There’s one scene you see me in the film… I’m laying down on the bed,” she recalled. “I’m just doing the scene laying down because that’s all I could do at that point.”
Quite the taxing effort for Lane and the crew.
