Jennifer Lopez was born and grew up in the South Bronx, New York to Puerto Rican parents Guadalupe Rodríguez, a kindergarten teacher, and David Lopez, a computer specialist. She has two siblings, Lynda and Leslie. Lopez spent her entire academic career in Catholic schools, finishing at the all-girls Preston High School, in the Bronx. She financed singing and dancing lessons for herself from the age of 19. After attending Baruch College for one semester, Lopez divided her time between working in a legal office, dance classes, and dance performances in Manhattan night clubs. After months of auditioning for dance roles, Lopez was selected as a dancer for various rap music videos, a 1990 episode of Yo! MTV Raps, and as a backup dancer for the New Kids on the Block and their performance of their song "Games" for the American Music Awards in 1990. In 1991, she won a national competition and earned a spot dancing on the popular Fox comedy television series, "In Living Color," as one of the "Fly Girls”, this is when her career really started to take off. A series of small acting jobs also put her in the spot light for all of the world to see, including parts in two more series and a TV movie, Nurses on the Line: The Crash of Flight 7, in 1993. Her first feature film was Mi Familia, or My Family, in 1995. She also appeared in Money Train (1995), with Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, and in Jack (1996), directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Robin Williams.
However, Lopez's first big break came in 1997, when she was chosen to play the title role in Selena, a biography movie of the Tejano pop singer Selena Quintillana Perez, who was killed by a crazed fan in 1995. She earned so much praise for her performance, including a Golden Globe nomination, and became the highest-paid Latina actress in history with her paycheck of $1 million. That same year, Lopez starred in the movie Anaconda and in Blood and Wine, along with Jack Nicholson. Her role as federal marshal...