Jennifer Lopez on Single Motherhood, ‘Back-up Plan’

Baby mama in the making: Jennifer Lopez plays Zoe, a single woman up for artificial insemination, in "The Back-up Plan."

We can’t imagine the pain of giving birth to one kid, much less two at the same time, and give Jennifer Lopez a lot of credit for doing it both in real life and on screen. Two years since she gave birth to her twins Emme and Max, Lopez is back in mommy mode in The Back-up Plan, playing a woman who responds to the ticking of her biological clock by getting artificially inseminated. In predictable but fun rom-com fashion, she juggles romance with a yummy dairy farmer/cheese merchant (Alex O’Loughlin) and double pregnancy, looking lovelier than ever — with and without her faux belly.

“It was just time for me to do a movie again,” says Lopez, who liked that her character, an independent, successful pet store proprietor, “was actually better off than her male counterpart,” and completely related to the very familiar art-imitating-life aspects of the pregnancy plot. “Because I’d just gone through it I knew that it was going to ring true for so many women,” she says. “You’re so hungry and sleepy and there’s so much going on with your body hormonally.”

Since the twins were born, Lopez says, “I really felt the growth of myself as a human being, as a person. Just having that feeling of love inside you all the time is such a fulfilling place to be, I kind of wish it would have happened earlier in my life sometimes,” Lopez, 40, confides. “But I know things happen when they’re supposed to happen.”

Had she not met her husband, singer Marc Anthony, Lopez says she wouldn’t have considered a sperm-donor pregnancy. “It is such a hard job to raise a child and to be everything to that child without a partner. I think it’s just admirable and courageous and brave and every other valiant word I can think of [to do that]. I don’t know if I could do it on my own,” Lopez admits.

Now developing several film projects, readying a new album called Love? for release this summer, and planning a Spanish CD for next year, Lopez is excited about the future but wouldn’t change a thing about the past. “I really love the direction my life has taken. Babies make you feel like your life is just beginning, probably because their life is just beginning and you’re right there with them,” she says. “I feel now like I’m 25 again and that it’s all starting over.”

Would you consider single motherhood by choice? Tell us why!

Photo credit: CBS Films

Tags: Brave, CBS Films Productions Inc, Channel 7, Emme, farmer, Human Interest, Jennifer Lopez, Love? for, Marc Anthony, Max, Music, Music Album Release, pet store proprietor, singer, Singers, Spanish CD, The Back-Up Plan