The best Jennifer Lopez movies prove that the musical mega-star is a true crossover sensation. Lopez has come a long way from her beginnings as a Fly Girl on the sketch comedy series In Living Color. She was able to leverage that into an acting career, which included roles in musical biopics like Selena, crime dramas like Out of Sight, and eventually, Oscar-nominated movies like Hustlers. Along the way, she also proved to be a massive star in the music industry, winning Grammys and selling millions of albums.
However, J-Lo has never stayed in just one lane. She can release a new album that hits the top of the Billboard charts and then turn around and turn in an acting performance that wows critics and fans alike. Even after a short stint in the early 2000s when her acting career hit a slump thanks partially to her paparazzi fame with her relationship with Ben Affleck, she renounced nicely and has put out some of her best work since that time. With several awards and movies in everything from horror to sci-fi and romantic comedies to biopics, Jennifer Lopez has something in her filmography for all movie fans.
10 U Turn (1997)
- Stream now on Cackle
With Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez, Oliver Stone directs this crime thriller. A man (Penn) heads to Vegas to pay off a steep gambling debt, and on the run from the mafia, he stops in Arizona, where the events don’t change for the better. It is there that he meets a couple (Nick Nolte and Jennifer Lopez) who want to hire him to kill each other. U Turn is a crime drama that is mostly a dark comedy with some very violent and disturbing moments. While critics mostly bashed the movie, it has picked up a small cult status over the years.
9 Marry Me (2022)
- Stream now on Peacock
In 2022, Jennifer Lopez was back in the romantic comedy genre in a movie where she starred as a pop star who decides she will marry a match teacher who held up a “Marry Me” sign at a concert. The reason is simply that she just learned her fiancé was cheating on her, and she decided to marry him on the spot at the concert. While the movie was a small box office success, it ended up a massively popular streaming movie on Peacock as well as on Prime Video, where it hit the top spot for two weeks. Lopez also has an original song in Marry Me titled “On My Way (Marry Me)”.
8 Home (2015)
- Stream now on Netflix
Home is an animated movie that follows an alien (Jim Parsons) who becomes friends with humans while his race attempts to overtake and conquer humans in a “friendly” invasion. On his adventure, he befriends a girl (Rihanna), and he tries to help her rescue her mother (Lopez). One of the best Jennifer Lopez movies, it’s quirky, fun, hilarious, and totally wholesome. The movie received lukewarm reviews but was a popular hit for kids and families. It was nominated for three prestigious Annie Awards.
7 Antz (1998)
- Stream now on Peacock
Jennifer Lopez has done more than her fair share of voice acting, and one of the best-animated movies for the actor was the 1998 DreamWorks movie Antz. While the movie remains a bit overlooked thanks to it coming out at the same time as Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, it remains a good watch, telling the story of an ant colony, where one ant is trying to go against the totalitarian nature of its colony. The film was a box office and critical success and went on to pick up four Annie nominations while also finding spinoffs with four video games.
6 An Unfinished Life (2005)
- Stream now on Paramount+
An Unfinished Life is a family drama starring Jennifer Lopez as Jean, a woman who experiences many turns of bad luck. As a result, she takes her young daughter and moves in with her previously estranged father-in-law (Robert Redford). With tragedy in the past and the present, these two must overcome their grief and learn to help each other through their lives. This pure, heartfelt, and tragic story is a stellar performance by Lopez and Redford. While a box office failure, it was well received by most critics.
5 The Cell (2000)
- Stream now on Hoopla
This sci-fi flick is slightly on the horror side of the genre and Jennifer Lopez stars alongside Vincent D’Onofrio. Utilizing new technology, a social worker (Lopez) tries to enter the mind of a serial killer (D’Onofrio) in order to learn about the whereabouts of his latest victim. However, this takes her into a seemingly virtual reality world of the killer’s mind where nothing is as it seems. Directed by Tarsem Singh, The Cell is one of the best Jennifer Lopez movies in the sci-fi genre. it picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Makeup and remains a cult classic.
4 My Family (1995)
- Rent On Prime Video & Apple TV
Released in 1995, My Family was only the third movie Jennifer Lopez appeared in and her first major theatrical release. The story follows three generations of a Mexican-American family, mostly focusing on the past and present of the family. Jennifer Lopez appears in the flashback scenes of the young version of Maria Sanchez, an American citizen mistakenly deported to Mexico who ends up marrying Jose (Jacob Vargas) and building this loving family. Lopez received her first critical acclaim for this movie, picking up an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
3 Out Of Sight (1998)
- Rent On Prime Video & Apple TV
The 1990s were definitely a time when Jennifer Lopez truly shined in Hollywood. Out of Sight is a Steven Soderbergh crime drama, one that takes a more romantic comedic spin. A bank robber (George Clooney) breaks out of jail and kidnaps a U.S. Marshal (Lopez) – with who he finds an attraction. The movie was critically praised and scored two Oscar nominations. It also helped make indie darling Soderbergh more mainstream and showed the world how Lopez could really heat up the screen, especially opposite someone like Clooney.
2 Selena (1997)
- Stream On HBO Max
This biography music drama is certainly one of Jennifer Lopez’ most famous roles and tells the famous true story of Selena, a Tejano singer from Texas who dominated the charts before her tragic murder at the age of 23. This was easily one of the best Jennifer Lopez movies for years, earning the actress a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, which was her topp acclaim for a long time. In 2021, the Library of Congress added the movie to the United States National Film Registry.
1 Hustlers (2019)
- Rent On Prime Video & Apple TV
Jennifer Lopez headlined the crime drama Hustlers in 2019 and has never been better. The movie stars Julia Stiles as a journalist who is working on a story about a former New York City exotic dancer named Destiny (Constance Wu) and her former friend and mentor Ramona Vega (Lopez). The movie then flashes back and shows Destiny’s rise and her tumultuous relationship with Ramona when they start a new hustle where they drug wealthy men and then steal money from their credit cards. The film finished on several top lists for the year and Lopez picked up several nominations and wins at various ceremonies that year. She was heavily in Oscar conversations but many felt she was snubbed of a nomination.
