Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck appeared happy and in love on their pre-Valentine’s Day date!
On Tuesday, February 13, the couple, who tied the knot in 2022, attended the singer’s new Amazon original This Is Me…Now: A Love Story movie premiere at the Dolby Theatre in L.A.
The film is a musical and visual rendition of the life events that inspired Lopez’s upcoming album, This Is Me…Now, which is a sequel to her 2002 album, This Is Me…Then.
Affleck, 51, and Lopez, 54, walked the carpet arm-in-arm. The two laughed and smile at each other, with Lopez wearing a black deep V-neck ballgown with matching black gloves and Affleck in a classic navy suit and white shirt.
Trevor Noah and Jane Fonda made cameos in the latest movie, and stars such as Derek Hough, America Ferrera, Fat Joe and Xochitl Gomez were also spotted on the red carpet.
In a recent press conference, the “On the Floor” artist admitted her real-life romance with Affleck inspired her to finish the project, which she had been working on for years.
“I was like, ‘I don’t write, I don’t do this.’ He was like, ‘You do, you write, you direct, you produce, you choreograph, you do all the things. Start stepping into that, start owning a little bit of who you are,’” she recalled The Town star telling her.
The film’s direction was heavily influenced by the rekindling of Lopez and Affleck’s romance, after the pair said “I do” two decades after they broke off their original engagement.
“Metaphorically, it is true,” director Dave Meyers said of the project’s inspiration. “That stemmed from her telling me the pain that she’s been in, specifically the pain that she went through when she broke up with Ben the first time. There was a lot of honesty that was shared in that first meeting, and so the heart factory became sort of a Titanic-level meltdown, which was a metaphor for what she was giving me as far as her truth.”
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In an interview last week, Lopez gushed over how her relationship with Affleck motivated her to create new music as well.
"When Ben and I got back together, it was just like, 'I want to make music again, I want to get back in the studio,'" she revealed. "I was very, very inspired."
"I wanted to capture this moment in time," she noted of using their love story as a basis for her new work. "Once the music was done, it felt so special to me. It felt like something very different than I had ever done, even though I've written about love my whole career."
"Half the time, I was thinking, like, 'This is amazing! I am so excited that I'm doing this!' And then half the time I was like, 'Why are you doing this? You are so crazy,'" the musician continued.
"But I think that's what being an artist is about, you know, you have to. That's the difference between being an artist and not being an artist, how vulnerable you can get," she explained.
