Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow surprised Hollywood this week by appearing side-by-side for the first time in their decades-long careers, signalling what appears to be the end of their rift.
The pair posed arm-in-arm at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Gala at The Beverly Hills Hotel on Wednesday, where each was honoured for her professional achievements.
Lopez received the Equity in Entertainment Award, while Paltrow accepted the prestigious Sherry Lansing Leadership Award.
Onlookers noted that the two women were warm and relaxed with each other, chatting easily and smiling for cameras during the breakfast event — a far cry from their widely discussed tension of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
A source told DailyMail: ‘They are doing OK, they are friends. There is no frost, no bad vibes, they are good.’
Their history is rooted in a 1998 Movieline interview that became infamous for Lopez’s candid and sometimes cutting assessments of fellow actresses.
At the time, Lopez had only recently broken through with Selena and felt, by her own later accounts, defensive in an industry that had not yet embraced her.
Asked about Paltrow, who had just won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, Lopez replied dismissively: ‘Tell me what she’s been in? I swear to God, I don’t remember anything she was in. Some people get hot by association. I heard more about her and Brad Pitt than I ever heard about her work.’
The quote reverberated for years, becoming a persistent footnote in both women’s public narratives.
Eventually, Lopez said she was misquoted, though the rumoured tension between the two actresses remained a pop-culture curiosity as the years passed.
Complicating their dynamic was a shared romantic link: both women dated Ben Affleck at pivotal times in their careers.
Paltrow and Affleck were a high-profile couple from 1997 to 2000 and collaborated on Shakespeare in Love and Bounce.
Lopez and Affleck, of course, became one of the most talked-about couples of the early 2000s. They met on the set of Gigli, became engaged in 2002, and ended their relationship in early 2004 before famously reuniting in 2021.
Their rekindled romance culminated in a 2022 marriage and a 2024 split, finalized in early 2025.
Even though both actresses remained respectful in public over the years, their proximity through Affleck — along with industry gossip — fuelled speculation of an unspoken rivalry.
Neither Lopez nor Paltrow has commented publicly on the apparent reconciliation.
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