Jennifer Lopez Said 1 Movie Would’ve Been ‘Very Different’ if She and Sean Penn Were Single on Set

Jennifer Lopez and Sean Penn felt a connection on the set of one film. She said she would have a fling with him in another life.

In 1997, Jennifer Lopez and Sean Penn starred in U-Turn, an Oliver Stone thriller. Lopez expressed her pride at working with an actor of Penn’s caliber and said they got along well on set. So well, in fact, that she might have pursued a romantic connection with him had they not been in other relationships.

Jennifer Lopez said she would have had a ‘thing’ with Sean Penn in a different universe

When Lopez filmed U-Turn, she was engaged to her first husband, Ojani Noa. Penn was married to his second wife, actor Robin Wright. Still, both actors felt chemistry between them. When asked which of her co-stars she would have had a “thing” with in a parallel universe, Lopez named Penn.

“Should I get myself in trouble with my husband?” she asked Movieline in 1998. “OK, in a parallel universe, Sean.”

She said that she and Penn even discussed this on set. She believed they would have had a very different experience working together if they had both been single.

“I was engaged when we were shooting U-Turn, and one day he said, ‘If I weren’t married and you weren’t engaged, would this have been a very different movie?’ And I go, ‘Yeah! Very different,’” she recalled. “So we kind of … well, we both had our own lives, so that made a real difference.”

Jennifer Lopez was proud to have worked with Sean Penn

Lopez said she was proud to work with someone like Penn. She believed that he respected her too.

“He has a lot of strength and we got along great, actually,” she said. “He could tell right away I wasn’t intimidated to be there with him and Oliver.”

She said that working on U-Turn felt like a major accomplishment because of the talent of her co-stars.

“Working with Sean and Nick Nolte, too, who is a truly amazing, great actor whom I respect so much — that was top of the line,” she said. “I could never work with better actors.”

Though Lopez felt proud to have worked on the film with these actors, U-Turn received tepid reviews, even landing on some worst-of-the-year lists.

She spoke dismissively about his ex-wife

In the same interview in which Lopez spoke glowingly about Penn, she shared some dismissive remarks about his ex-wife, Madonna. Penn and Madonna were married between 1985 and 1989. Lopez said that while she could admire her as a performer, she found it vaguely insulting that Madonna would call herself an actor.

“Do I think she’s a great performer? Yeah. Do I think she’s a great actress? No,” Lopez said. “Acting is what I do, so I’m harder on people when they say, ‘Oh, I can do that — I can act.’ I’m like, ‘Hey, don’t spit on my craft.'”

Her comments about Madonna and some of her other contemporaries, like Salma Hayek and Gwyneth Paltrow, generated some controversy. Lopez insisted that her remarks had been taken out of context.