Even when she was just an In Living Color Fly Girl, Jennifer Lopez was determined to climb the Hollywood ladder. The beauty from the Bronx chose her career steps as precisely as she chose her dance steps, and on more than one occasion passed up the fast buck in favor of the long-term prize.

"I've been careful with what I've selected," says Lopez, whose advance planning pays off this year with starring roles in three films. "There were projects I could've done for the money because I was broke, but I always felt I had a chance at a better, longer career."

First up for Lopez in '97 is February's Blood and Wine, a noir thriller in which she plays Jack Nicholson's lover. And in April, she gets jungle fever with Anaconda, a sort of Jaws-in-the-Amazon story with Eric Stoltz.

But it's her performance in Selena, due out in March, that has the Industry talking. Lopez reportedly delivers a star turn as the Tejano pop star who was shot dead two years ago by an official in her fan club.

"I didn't expect it to happen like this, wrapping one film and flying out to do a new one the next day," says Lopez, currently shooting Oliver Stone's U-Turn, in which she and Nick Nolte play a couple haunted by Sean Penn's drifter. "But I'm fresh enough and ambitious enough to stay up all night for the sake of a job. I'm not gonna take it easy. I want to do so much more when I'm getting these great opportunities."

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