Jennifer Lynn Lopez was born on July 24, 1969[note 2] in the Castle Hill neighborhood of The Bronx, New York. The middle child of David and Guadalupe Lopez, she Lopez has an elder sister Leslie and a younger sister Lynda (born June 14, 1971). David worked the night shift at the Guardian Insurance Company, before becoming a computer technician at the firm, while Guadalupe stayed home and looked after the children. When Jennifer was born, the Lopez family was living in a small apartment. A few years later, her parents had saved up enough money to be able to purchase a two-story house, which was a big event for the family. At the age of five, Lopez began taking singing and dancing lessons; and toured New York with her school when she was seven years old.[16]
Her parents stressed the importance of her work ethic and being able to speak English—they encouraged girls to put on performances at home, singing and dancing in front of each other and their friends so that they would stay "out of trouble".[16] She was raised as a Roman Catholic.[17][18][19] Lopez spent her entire academic career in Catholic schools, finishing at the all-girls Preston High School.[20] In school, Lopez did gymnastics, ran track on a national level and was a member of the school's softball team.[21] She excelled athletically rather than academically, competing in national track championships.[16] In 1984, at age fifteen she began dating David Cruz, her first boyfriend.
While attending her final year of high school, Lopez learned about a film casting that was seeking several teenage girls for small roles. She auditioned and was cast in My Little Girl (1986), an low-budget film co-written and directed by Connie Kaiserman.[22] Lopez acted as Myra, a young woman at a center for troubled girls. After she finished filming her role in the film, Lopez knew that she wanted to become a famous movie star. To please her parents, though, she enrolled in Baruch College, only to drop out after one semester. She told her parents her dream of becoming a movie star, but they ensisted that it was a "really stupid" idea and that "no Latinos did that". The differences in opinions led Lopez to move out of their family home and into an apartment in Manhattan. During this period, Lopez performed in regional productions of the musicals: Jesus Christ, Superstar! and Oklahoma. From there, she was hired for the chorus in a Golden Musicals of Broadway, which toured Europe for a period of five months. She was unhappy with the role, as she was the only member of the chorus not to have a solo. She later got a job on the show Synchronicity in Japan, where she acted as a dancer, singer and a choreographer.[23]
Lopez gained her first regular high-profile job as a Fly Girl dancer on the television comedy program In Living Color in 1991. She applied for the job after one of the cast members was unavailable to continue with the show. Out of two thousand applicants, Lopez made it to the finals. She became the runner-up, but eventually received the role when the winner was unable to accept the job. She moved with Cruz to Los Angeles to film the series and remained a regular cast member until 1993. After her departure from the show, Lopez became a backup dancer for Janet Jackson; also making an appearance in her 1993 video "That's the Way Love Goes".[24][25][26] Lopez received her first professional acting gig in the direct-to-video drama film Lost in the Wild (1993). She co-starred along Lindsay Wagner and Robert Loggia
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