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Factor in that Lopez got her start in the biz in 1991 as a Fly Girl on In Living Color —you can also spot her shaking her booty in the video for Janet Jackson's ''That's the Way Love Goes'' — and the portrait of an acting-singing-dancing triple threat begins to take shape. ''I want everything. I want family. I want to do good work. I want love. I want to be comfortable,'' she says. ''I think of people like Cher and Bette Midler and Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand. That's always been the kind of career I'd hoped to have. I want it all.''

Be careful what you wish for. By many accounts in Hollywood, a graceful transition into full-fledged stardom hasn't been easy for Lopez. Nor for a number of people in her path, who, without much prodding, let fly a slew of adjectives about her. Not a soul describes her as mean, but how about difficult? Self-absorbed? And, oh, why not throw in capricious, too? ''Yeah, I'm sure they didn't put it that nicely, either,'' says Lopez, clearly aware of the sniping that's out there.

Lopez must also know that she's partly responsible for her hell-on-wheels reputation. In a now notorious interview with Movieline magazine last February, Lopez sounded off ungenerously about everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow, implying she got ahead by dating Brad Pitt, to Wesley Snipes, whose advances she says she rebuffed while shooting Money Train.

Lopez's relationship with the media hasn't improved much since. According to a Universal executive who worked on marketing for Out of Sight, making sure the actress showed up to promote the film was a full-time job. In one instance, the morning after the movie's New York premiere, Lopez missed a live booking on the Today show by showing up almost an hour late. A Newsweek story never happened after she postponed the interview three times. "People would call up screaming at us, 'Where the hell is she?'" says the exec. "Practically every show she did was like that. Everything had to get down to the wire."

The uncomfortable glare on her private life has also left her smarting. Since her split earlier this year from Ojani Noa (the pair married in 1997, after meeting in a Miami restaurant where Noa was a waiter), persistent gossip items have linked her with rap mogul Sean ''Puffy'' Combs. "That is so dead and tired. We're just friends," she says, adding that she doesn't have a boyfriend right now. Nor does she have a publicist, since parting ways with her last one, Karynne Tencer, over the summer. One big Hollywood public-relations agency recently declined to take her on as a client because, according to one employee, ''People think she's hard to handle. Life is too short.''

The net effect of these tribulations is that the diva who once roared now keeps her mouth shut as much as possible. ''I absolutely watch what I say more,'' she says. ''I make my point, and I don't say much else.'' And if at one point her face seems to reveal that she's hurting from this year of growing pains, she's not going to open up about that either. ''It's not upsetting,'' she says, sounding more annoyed than angry. ''Who cares? I don't. I'm just being who I am. I don't try to be nice. I don't try to be not nice. I'm not trying to show you I'm a nice person either.''


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