Jennifer Lopez: Tempted by the younger man in the Boy Next Door

JENNIFER Lopez enters the room clutching a frothy coffee, her famous curves poured into an all-black ensemble and her skin glowing like a woman half her age.

The 45-year-old is here to talk about her new film, The Boy Next Door, about a teacher who has an affair with her teenage neighbour. Lopez says she feels sexier than ever. The singer and actress — whose former boyfriend, dancer Casper Smart, was 18 years her junior — is glad Hollywood no longer sees it as “shocking” that older women can be attractive to younger men.

“I think it’s more realised than ever that women are at our best, and that we get better, as we get older,” says the mother-of-two, who also co-produced the film.

If you’re looking for a feminist message, however, you won’t find it in this raunchy thriller.“Nah,” says Bronx-born Lopez. “This is not THAT movie.”

The ‘Jenny From The Block’ singer plays Claire Peterson, a high-school English teacher who has separated from her unfaithful husband, and whose teenage son, Kevin, is being bullied. Kevin finds a friend in their handsome 19-year-old neighbour, Noah (played by Pretty Little Liars star, Ryan Guzman), whose attraction to Claire is clear from the start.

“She’s so vulnerable that she makes a terrible mistake, something that she would normally never do. I feel like that’s such a human thing,” says Lopez, who is mum to seven-year-old twins, Emme and Max.

“We’re all looking to anaesthetise ourselves at certain times, and with certain things, when we go through hard times. And this guy comes along...”

Unlike many A-listers, Lopez decided not to have a body double for the sex scene (“It was all me... and all Ryan”), choosing, instead, to eat carefully and put in extra hours at the gym.

After their night of passion, Claire realises her mistake.

Noah has other plans, however; his lust turns into a violent and dangerous obsession.

Director Rob Cohen auditioned 150 young actors to play Noah, before choosing Guzman, 27. “Going from the boy-next-door to a sociopath is no small feat for an actor of any age or experience,” says Lopez, whose big acting break came starring opposite George Clooney in the 1998 crime comedy, Out Of Sight.

As the film gets darker, the action sequences build up, from car chases to a fight scene, which ends with a huge fire.

“Even though this was a character-driven drama, we had a lot of action in it,” says Lopez.

“We were lucky enough to have a great stunt coordinator to make things look dangerous, but you still get beat up doing those stunts.”

When Lopez isn’t acting, singing, or working as a judge on American Idol, she’s at home in Los Angeles with her children.

“We have so many different little rituals that we do,” she says with a smile. “Every Friday night, I let them bring their sleeping bags into my room and we do a sleepover. We watch a movie together, then they fall asleep, and then, once they’re asleep, they don’t wake up for anything.”

And while The Boy Next Door isn’t likely to win any awards, its leading lady is pleased to have been a part of it.

“There was just something really great about this character, for me, at this time in my life,” Lopez says.

“I find that, often during my life, I have attracted whatever it is I need to work out, for some reason. It’s very serendipitous in that way.”

• The Boy Next Door is released Friday