Jennifer Lopez Talks Competing With 20-Something Pop Stars & Making Rom-Coms

Jennifer Lopez may have turned 40 last year, but she has no problems competing with young stars in the pop world.

“This is what I do,” she told the February 2010 issue of ELLE magazine. “What, because I have kids and a husband now I’m not supposed to be me? I’m a more heightened me if anything. Hyper J.Lo. Everything I wanted before, I want twice as much now. And that doesn’t mean material things; it means to explore more, to think more. Being an artist doesn’t start because you’re 21, and it doesn’t end because you’re 51. You are who you are until the day you die.”

Jennifer will release a new album, “Love?” later this year and she has a new romantic comedy on the way too – “The Back-Up Plan” with Aussie Alex O’Loughlin.

The rom-com genre is one Jennifer feels comfortable in, and one where she’s had great success.

“I think ‘Maid in Manhattan’ and ‘Monster-in-Law’ are very layered movies,” she told the mag of her past work. “That’s why they’re so successful. People don’t like sh***y romantic comedies. Nothing that’s sh***y is going to make $100 million.”

In “The Back-Up Plan,” which is due out this April, Jennifer plays Zoe, a woman who meets Stan, a man who might be “The One,” the very day she is artificially inseminated. When asked why Jennifer herself never considered in vitro, the star, a mom to twins Max and Emme who turn 2 this year, said she wanted to leave things up to fate.

“When it comes to family and relationships, I’m quite traditional. Just because of the way I was raised. And I also believe in God and I have a lot of faith in that, so I just felt like you don’t mess with things like that,” she said. “And I guess deep down I really felt like either this is not going to happen for me or it is. You know what I mean? And if it is, it will. And if it’s not, it’s not going to.”