One of the best things about Jennifer Lopez [1] is that she always manages to come off as totally genuine, whether it's while pranking Leonardo DiCaprio with James Corden [2] or giving fans a look into her sweet home life with her kids [3], 8-year-old twins Max and Emme. The "Ain't Your Mama" [4] singer continued this trend when she sat down with The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast [5], where the magazine's cover star [6] wasn't afraid to be candid about the tabloid nightmare that was "Bennifer," the dip in her career after Gigli, and how her famous curves [7] have changed standards in Hollywood.

• On her iconic figure: "In traditional movies, that wasn't the figure unless you were playing, like, the femme fatale or the bombshell or something like that. You couldn't be the serious lead. We kind of broke that mold."
• On why she loved being a part of American Idol: "I think [my fans] only knew me from my records and my videos and my movies, which are playing a character, and what the press said about me, and the press was never really favorable to me — I don't know why. At times they were, when the work was good, but there was a lot of tabloid fodder about my relationships; there was a lot of rumors about my, you know, 'diva-like behavior,' which was totally untrue; and I just carried this stigma with me. So when I did American Idol and they got to see me sitting there with no script, no lines, just being myself, laughing and loving music and talking about it and being emotional, and they got to see my heart and my soul, they saw a different person than what they had heard about. They got to see the real me, and they embraced that, and I embraced it and it was a beautiful thing that happened."
• On her rocky relationship with fame: "As I get older it bothers me more. When you're young it's like a shock at first, and you kind of have anxiety about it, but then you get used to that life and it just becomes your normal life. And now? I think when I had kids and stuff, I was like — I wanted a little more freedom to go outside and not have them have to deal with that part of it."
• On one of the lowest points of her career: "I never thought of it as, 'Oh, this is terrible! My career's over!' I just never thought that. I just knew that that [Gigli] didn't work and that's all it was, or that my relationship [with Ben Affleck [8]] didn't work and that's all it was. It wasn't going to end me, personally or professionally. Even later on, after I got married and had kids and it was a slow time for me work-wise — I pulled back and I was working on my marriage and I was being a mom and all that — I didn't feel like, 'Oh, what is my life?! Who am I right now?! Am I still that entertainer?' I realized, 'Yeah, you're gonna be even better than you were before. Watch.' Those are the kind of talks that I had with myself."