Lopez Burdened By Fame

Jennifer Lopez insists she doesn't really know that J.Lo or Jenny from the Block person journalists love to write about and paparazzi like to photograph.

"Who I am as a person has never jibed with how I'm portrayed in the press. I am not the diva the press has created," insists Lopez.

"It's all fabricated to make things more interesting."

Lopez utters these pearls of wisdom at a press conference for more than 100 journalists gathered to do interviews for her new comedy Monster-in-Law.

Her co-stars Jane Fonda and Michael Vartan have just completed three hours of roundtable interviews with the same journalists in groups of 10 to 12 people.

Lopez couldn't spare the time or the energy but she's not a diva.

A whole floor of the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel had been secured for Lopez. No one was allowed on the floor without a pink armband and people were checked at the elevators by security officers.

When a journalist confronted Lopez about the strict security measures, she jokes it was because there would be a dance immediately following her press conference.

She then insists she knew nothing about them.

When that remark elicited a wave of snickers, her press agents insisted it was the hotel or film company who had initiated these measures and not Lopez or her team.

"I have to have security," adds Lopez. "The paparazzi have become so aggressive. Their relationship with me has turned into a game of cops-and-robbers."

She says her only recourse has been "to take myself out of the public arena as much as possible. I've stopped leaving my house unless it is absolutely necessary."

At 35, Lopez is one of the most famous women of her generation.

"To achieve this kind of celebrity I have essentially sacrificed the rest of life in general. I don't live a normal life. I can't live a normal life."

Though she refuses to talk specifically about her two former marriages, botched engagements and earlier failed relationships, the second Mrs. Marc Anthony admits she has "sacrificed relationships because of my career.

"Those are the big sacrifices but the small ones like giving up your weekends to do interviews or attend functions, shoot movies or record albums also become taxing.

"The normal pleasures people take for granted are no longer possible for me."

She admits fame is easier for the young.

"Giving up so much of your private life doesn't matter when you're in your 20s. It's not until you're in your 30s and look back that you realize just how much you've actually missed."

Lopez insists she did not commiserate about the ravages of celebrity with Fonda who returned after an absence of 15 years to play her scheming nemesis in Monster-in-Law.

"Jane and I talked mostly about how we were going to approach certain scenes with each other. We didn't talk politics or our private lives."

One of the scenes the stars agonized over is a fight scene in which they exchange a number of slaps.

"Getting beat up by Jane Fonda is definitely a highlight of my career," says Lopez.

"In one shot that stayed in the movie you can see my swollen cheek and I gave Jane a blood blister when the ring I was wearing caught her near the eye."

Fonda plays the prospective mother-in-law from hell.

Lopez insists she "never had any problems with the mothers of my boyfriends. They liked me."

Then she adds her mother was a different case altogether.

"My mom is pretty tough on my men. She loves me a lot. She's very protective."

Lopez says her mother and father are responsible for her approach to her career.

"Work was a very big part of my parents' lives and their work ethic is an important part of my life.

"They taught me to be ambitious because that means you are passionate about the things you do and I certainly am. I won't put my name to anything unless I feel strongly about it.

"People like Jane Fonda are an inspiration for me. I want a career as long and memorable as hers."