Jennier Lopez has had a topsy-turvy career in which she always comes out on top. She rose to fame as a musical artist, someone whose great beauty and slick lyrics helped set her apart from most of the musical competition. Later, she became an actor with several successful films under her belt, and she even married a bona fide Hollywood legend, Ben Affleck. Based on all of these things, you might think that Lopez has had it easy…however, the starlet has weathered some major controversies over the years that would have destroyed the careers of lesser artists.
Like any big celeb, Lopez’s most embarrassing moments include a variety of transgressions. This includes allegations of lying in a documentary, misleading fans during an old ad campaign, stealing music, and more. On top of that, her relationship with Affleck quickly fell apart, and their deteriorating romance helped put a major spotlight on her other high-profile mistakes over the years.
Just what kinds of mistakes are we talking about, though? What are Lopez’s most embarrassing moments, and where can you find the receipts? Keep reading to find out!
An ad campaign backfires
At one point, Jennifer Lopez decided to market herself in a very unconventional way. In the ad, she hopped in her car (a Fiat 500) and drove through the South Bronx. According to the commercial, driving through her old hood is how the hit singer stays inspired. She was roundly mocked for how pretentious this sounds, but it’s still not as embarrassing as what happened next.
A press release for Lopez’s album On the 6 claimed that Lopez would be driving from Manhattan to the Bronx, revisiting her old stomping grounds and generally showcasing how connected to her roots she still was. However, it later came out that Lopez herself didn’t actually travel to the Bronx to shoot this ad. Instead, she used a stand-in body double, which arguably made Lopez seem like a poser rather than someone who knew how to keep it real.
Caught lying in her documentary?
If you didn’t already know, Jennifer Lopez has her own documentary named The Greatest Love Story Never Told. The whole thing focuses on Lopez preparing a new album, but it also gives her a platform and a sympathetic audience with which to share the story of her life. Unfortunately, she got busted lying (or, at the very least, exaggerating) about one aspect of her upbringing, and fans haven’t forgiven her since then
Since her “I’m still Jenny from the block” era, Lopez has been big on reminding fans of her early life and growing up in the Bronx. In the documentary, she speaks about how much she still feels connected to this area and how much it artistically inspires her. Now, Lopez really was raised in the Bronx, but some have accused her of pretending that she still has connections to the working class when that hasn’t been true in decades.
A tumultuous marriage to Ben Affleck
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have a fairly tortured romantic history. They got engaged in 2002, broke up, and then got back together, ultimately marrying each other in 2022 before Lopez filed for divorce in 2024. The whole thing is an emotional rollercoaster, one made even worse by how increasingly nasty and public the couple’s fights became during their time together.
Perhaps the best example of this is a video clip of the couple arguing that soon went viral on the internet. In the clip, she tastes his drink and then looks at him with instant disapproval, prompting a desperate Affleck to begin repeatedly shouting her name. While this was never confirmed by the couple, the going theory is that Lopez was inspecting whether the drink contained alcohol or not. This is important because Affleck is admittedly an alcoholic, one who has been in and out of rehab on multiple occasions.
With clips like this floating around, it’s no surprise these two didn’t stay together!
A musical thief?
Some of the more embarrassing Jennifer Lopez moments are more well-known than others. For example, you’ve probably heard rumors that she has stolen (or borrowed, or sampled without permission, or whatever term you may prefer) music from other artists for her background tracks. But one artist made things downright uncomfortable with his accusation, and his words have been following Lopez around ever since.
The artist in question is Usher, who claims that Lopez’s hit song “Get Right” is actually a re-recorded version of his own song, “Ride.” On another occasion, it was reported that Lopez was given songs to sing that were originally created for Ashanti. It didn’t help that Lopez later released a song that still had Ashanti’s vocals in it, furthering accusations that she plundered music from the other woman.