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Jennifer Lopez got to act with George Clooney, but there weren’t any romantic feelings.
On the Oct. 15 episode of The Howard Stern Show, Lopez, 56, opened up about her connections with male costars on projects. Stern, 71, asked, “Whenever you’re in a movie, is there immediate chemistry with your costars? Do they think they’re going to score with you immediately?”
“It’s funny. There’s movies where you have to have a certain kind of chemistry, and so you want to be comfortable, open with the person,” Lopez said. “But I think I’m very good at setting a boundary like, ‘This is work. This is not anything else.’ ”
“But guys are dogs,” Stern said and asked if Jack Nicholson was in love with her when they filmed 1996’s Blood and Wine. “You’d have to ask him,” Lopez said.
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“The chemistry between you and George Clooney was very strong,” Stern said next, referencing the 1998 crime film Out of Sight, which starred them both.
“Very strong, yep,” the actress agreed. Stern asked if there were any romantic feelings.
“Nothing,” Lopez confirmed.
Stern asked how she can act out romance on screen without it spilling over into real life. “Let me tell you my experience,” the Hustlers star said. “I was usually in a relationship. And the type of woman that I am, is when I’m in a relationship, nobody else exists. Period.”
Stern asked if her costars understood that, but she said she never had to explain with words. “These guys, I think, feel that. They feel that there’s not an ‘in’ here, when I’m with somebody,” she said.
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She added, “If I’m not with somebody and there’s chemistry, then maybe something could happen, but it’s not guaranteed. I have to like you.” She said if she were giving advice younger actresses, she would tell them not to start dating someone on a movie set.
“The only costar I was ever with was Ben,” she said, referencing her ex-husband Ben Affleck. The pair met in 2002 on the set of Gigli, but Lopez said they didn’t get together until he called her after the movie was over and she was single again.
Out of Sight was directed by Steven Soderbergh and also starred Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle and Steve Zahn. It was critically acclaimed and received two Oscar nominations and made over $70 million at the box office.
PEOPLE’s review at the time called Out of Sight a “richly textured crime drama” and noted Lopez’s “sultry” performance. It was also, at the time, Clooney’s best movie turn as he tried to establish himself as a movie star. He would continue to work with Soderbergh, most notably on the Ocean’s Eleven series.
Lopez, meanwhile, stars in the new movie Kiss of the Spider Woman alongside Diego Luna and Tonatiuh.
