Ben Affleck’s Exes Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez Talk Online Criticism, Public’s Expectations

Ben Affleck’s exes Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez have a lot more in common than one might think when it comes to their careers and the public’s reaction to them.

The duo joined Emily Blunt, Tessa Thompson, Elle Fanning and Sydney Sweeney in the Los Angeles Times’ The Envelope 2025 Oscar Actresses Roundtable discussion, where the duo went off on a tangent about how they handle both positive and negative feedback from the public.

“I try to never read anything about myself. Full stop. Ever. Period,” Paltrow, 53, told the group.

The revelation surprised Lopez, 56, who tries to follow the same policy but often can’t avoid having things shown to her: “Wait, not anything about yourself? Ever? Period? Because I don’t read reviews of my films either, but people will bring it to you when it’s good and you’re like, ‘Oh, nice.’ But there’s other things they’ll bring you….”

The Goop founder admitted that sometimes it happens and both women joked it makes them “want to die.”

“Like when someone forwards you a link to something really horrible about yourself, and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is bulls**t.’ I do try to avoid [that kind of stuff],” Paltrow explained. “I deleted Instagram.”

Both Lopez and Paltrow got their start as actresses and bonded over their respective decisions to branch out into other areas like entrepreneurship.

“When I stepped back to be an entrepreneur around 2008, I really confused and upset people,” Paltrow began. “Nobody understood what I was doing, and I faced a lot of criticism and confusion over the course of the 17 years since I sent out my first Goop newsletter.”

“I think our generation started thinking, like, ‘We need and want to do other things.’ Even when I started acting and I had done my early films, Out of Sight and Selena, and then decided I wanted to record music, and it was such a big deal,” Lopez shared. “People were like, ‘They’re never going take you seriously as an actor ever again.’”

Paltrow was shocked, noting that, at one point, Lopez had the No. 1 movie (The Wedding Planner) and the No. 1 album (J. Lo) at the same time.

“It was in the Guinness Book of Records. But that’s the thing, everybody’s always trying to tell you: ‘You can only do this,’ or ‘You can only do that.’ I had my perfume line. I had my clothing lines. I have my JLo Beauty now,” the Hustlers star explained. “You have to just do what feels good for you.”

“It doesn’t mean it’s for everybody. Somebody wants to just act their whole life, that’s beautiful too. That’s fantastic. I still want to direct. I still want to write more books,” Lopez added. “And I don’t ever feel like there’s somebody who can say to me, ‘No, you can’t.’”