J-Lo plays reporter probing Mexican border murders
Showbiz Desk

Pop diva and actress Jennifer Lopez has put aside her usual glamour and is filming in a hilltop shantytown this week for a gritty movie about the murders of hundreds of women on the U.S.-Mexico border. Wearing a blond wig, slacks and long-sleeved shirts, Lopez plays a Chicago-based reporter sent to Mexico to investigate the wave of more than 300 slayings in Ciudad Juarez, a violent border city in Chihuahua state across from El Paso, Texas.
Directed by Gregory Nava and co-starring Antonio Banderas, “Bordertown” is being shot in the Mexican city of Nogales on the border with Arizona. In baking heat on Friday, Lopez shot scenes in a shantytown of tin-roofed shacks, set up to look like a Ciudad Juarez neighborhood where many women were killed. Security was extremely tight for the 35-year-old A-list star.
Heavily armed Mexican police patrolled the set and three bodyguards were there along with her salsa star husband Marc Anthony to protect Lopez every time she stepped out of her sport utility vehicle for the shoots. Scores of star-struck Mexican film extras shivered in the morning cold on Friday, waiting for Lopez’ camera call. “I’ve only ever seen her in films before, and now getting to work with her is just thrilling,” said 53-year-old clothing trader Gustavo Moreno.
The week-long location shoot has brought traffic to a standstill in the dusty border city as thousands of residents and visitors jostled to catch a glimpse of the star, who has a huge following in Latin America.“It’s been just great for Nogales,” Sonora state film commissioner Adolfo Salido told Reuters at a hotel in the city used by some cast and crew members. “It’s brought in a lot of money and publicity, as well as giving local people some excitement,” he added.
The shoot also gave day work to more than 200 local market stall holders, students and housewives, who have been paid up to 500 pesos a day to play roles ranging from market traders to corpses laid up on a mortuary slab. “It’s kind of a fun experience, though a little scary,” said Crystal Zelk, a student from southern Arizona. “I play a corpse and it’s creepy to think of my family seeing me there in the morgue, dead,” she added.