Jennifer Lopez is walking tall…

The 43-year-old Puerto Rican actress-singer and former American Idol judge was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, receiving the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s 2,500th star.

“I cried like almost 15 thousand times,” she said afterward. “It was so crazy. But I kept promising everybody I wasn’t going to cry and they were like, ‘Cry!’ ‘You’re not helping!’ But it was an amazing moment.”

With boyfriend, Casper Smart, and her twins Max and Emme by her side, Lopez was serenaded with praise from actor Keenen Ivory Wayans, rapper Pitbull, her Selena director Gregory Nava and actress Jane Fonda, with whom she co-starred in Monster-in-Law.

“She should have an entire block of stars,” said Fonda. “In my opinion, she’s only scratched the surface in what she’s capable of.”

Lopez relished the chance to “kind of walk down memory lane” with Wayans — “he’s the reason I moved to Los Angeles because I got that job as a fly girl” — and Nava, who put her in her first movie.
“You realize you’ve been at this for a long time and you’ve been fighting and getting it,” she said. “It’s a real kind of landmark day for me and I am just glad my family was here to share it with me.”

Lopez, dressed brightly in a white top and a flowing peach skirt, became the first Latina actress to earn over $1 million for a role with the film Out of Sight.

With the simultaneous release of her second studio album J.Lo and her film The Wedding Planner in 2001, she became the first person to have a number one album and film in the same week.

With records sales of 75 million and a cumulative film gross of over $2 billion worldwide, Lopez is considered the most influential Hispanic performer in the United States.