There are major Oscar snubs every year, and some hurt more than others. One that was truly shocking omission this year was Jennifer Lopez, whose turn as a fierce single mom stripper-turned-grifter in Hustlers gave her acting career a much-needed boost, garnering her best critical hosannas since 1998’s Out of Sight. It was a bummer when she wasn’t one of the five Best Supporting Actress nominees, but the actress-singer has kept quiet and respectful of the people who were cited by the Academy.
But enough time has elapsed. Talking to Billboard a few weeks after the ceremony — when the award she may have received went to Laura Dern for Marriage Story — Lopez opened up about the snub
“I was a little sad,” she said. “There were so many articles, I got so many good notices — more than ever in my career — and there was a lot of ‘She’s going to get nominated for an Oscar, it’s going to happen. If she doesn’t [get it], you’re crazy.’ I’m reading all the articles going, ‘Oh my God, could this happen?’ And then it didn’t and I was like ‘Ouch.’”
If she felt bad for anyone, it was her crew. “Most of my team has been with me for years, 20, 25 years — and I think they had a lot of hopes on that and they wanted it too, so I felt like I let everyone down a little bit,” she admitted.
But like her Hustlers character, she wouldn’t let some bad news get her down. Besides, Oscar buzz isn’t nothing. “I was a good actress — always — I can say that now to myself, but what I do now is so much different than what I did then,” she said. “You realize you want people’s validation, you want people to say you did a good job and I realized, ‘No, you don’t need that. You do this because you love it.”
She ended on a bada*s note: “I don’t need this award to tell me I’m enough.”
(Via Billboard)
