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Jennifer Lopez accepts this year’s Icon Award at the iHeartRadio Music Awards and delivers a heartfelt speech thanking her fans for allowing her to do what she loves the most.
“I appreciate this so much, so very, very much,” the 52-year-old star told the crowd. “I wish I could tell you that awards were the most important to me, but that’s not true. And don’t think that I don’t appreciate the shiny, sparkly things because I do! I cannot lie; everybody knows that I do. But this isn’t why I do this. It’s not what matters most to me. I really do it for you guys.”
“Because of you, I get to do what I love the most in life, and that is the most wonderful blessing,” Lopez continued. “That’s a gift that you give me, and I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you to everyone who comes to a show, streams a song, sees a movie, follows me. You guys are the ones who give me the opportunity every day to live a life I couldn’t even imagine would come true when I was a little girl growing up in the Bronx.”
She continued: “You did that for me. You made that dream come true. I’m shaking! And I will always be grateful to each and every one of you for that. And I will never forget it, and I will never, ever take it for granted. So I want to say thank you to every one of you for believing in me when other people didn’t, even when I didn’t. Thank you for teaching me who I really am.”
The HOLA! USA Latina Powerhouse received several ovations from the crowd, including her boyfriend Ben Affleck, his son Samuel, and Lopez’s daughter Emme.
According to the singer, actress, and businesswoman, for her, the word “icon” is an acronym that means “I can overcome negativity.”
“Let me tell you something else,” she concluded. “I’m just getting started.”