Today, the DailyMail put a new Jennifer Lopez interview on their website - taken by Jane Gordon. Let me tell you that this interview isn’t all that great. I get a very negative vibe from the person who interviewed her, like she wasn’t satisfied with the interview herself because Jennifer didn’t want to talk about her pregnancy. Unlike some other celebs that are always talking about their pregnancy in every single interview and putting their naked pregnant bodies on covers, I am glad that Jennifer is different and kept mum. The pregnancy is her and Marc’s business, not someone elses. Just my 2 cents.

She may be an expectant mother, but Jennifer Lopez is in no mood to talk about it. In a final interview before taking a baby break, she teaches Jane Gordon a thing or two about pregnant pauses…

Jennifer Lopez isn’t happy.

A full ten minutes after her arrival in the plush penthouse suite of New York’s Royalton hotel she is still waiting for refreshments.

And, clearly, it just isn’t good enough.

“Hey!” she commands in a shrill Bronx accent.

“How about a little latte around here or something?”

A milky coffee on a cold Manhattan morning is a long way from the usual outrageous “riders” that Ms Lopez demands.

It doesn’t compare with the white Egyptian cotton sheets (”with a thread count of no less than 250″), the Evian water “at room temperature” or the £40 Diptyque candles that “her people” (there are around 20 of them in the next room) have been known to request on her behalf at hotels, on film sets or at concert venues.

But times have changed for the 38-year-old actress and singer, and now she seems more concerned about calcium counts than thread counts.

Which is as it should be for a woman who is six or seven months (estimates vary) into her first pregnancy.

Ms Lopez - or should that be Mrs Marc Anthony - has been very secretive about her condition, hiding her burgeoning bump beneath an array of ponchos and kaftans before finally announcing (to 10,000 fans at a Miami stadium in November) that “Marc and I are expecting”.

This is one of the first (and by all accounts one of the last) interviews she is giving before taking a three-month baby break, and I have come ready for a cosy chat about nursing bras, stretch marks and caesarean scars.

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony

In full bloom: Jennifer and husband Marc Anthony last december

But Jennifer, who is draped in what looks to be several hundred yards of grey flannel (courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent), would rather talk about her work, the weather or even her shoes (black patent six-inch killer heels), and the mere mention of ‘pregnancy’ causes a reaction that is not dissimilar to being cryogenically frozen.

Does this new phase of her life, I nervously ask after several direct questions about her baby have been rebuffed, mark a change of direction - are we seeing a new, more rounded Jennifer in more senses than one?

“Oh that’s so funny,” she says, laughing through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know if it’s a different direction. It’s more of an evolution kind of thing, just going with what’s happening at the moment.” It is impossible not to look at her bump when she talks about her “evolution”.

Rumour-mongers suggest that she might be having IVF-conceived twins.

To be fair to Jennifer, though, the world’s press has been anticipating this baby (or babies) for many years, so it is perhaps not surprising that she is a little touchy about the subject.

So I pick another (rather unexpected) topic - gardening, and she instantly lights up.

“When Marc and I got our house in Los Angeles after we got married, one of the reasons that I fell in love with it was the garden.

“It’s an English rose garden - we have 30 different kinds. I am no gardener - I have no green thumb - but I love the garden.”

Ms Lopez also talks endlessly - though not always coherently - about her work.

Since marrying singer/songwriter and actor Marc Anthony, this driven woman has been giving a professional nod to her Latino roots.

In addition to the couple’s recent tour (on the last night of which they announced her pregnancy), she has recorded a Spanish language album and co-starred with Marc in El Cantante, a biopic of the Puerto Rican salsa artist Hector Lavoe. Her latest venture is a perfume, Deseo (Spanish for desire).

“The idea behind the perfume was to create something that matched my style right now.

“I am more earthy, but at the same time I haven’t given up on my diamonds - so we came up with the notion of a diamond in the rough,” she says.

Jennifer’s reluctance to talk about the baby (or babies) and eagerness to chat about gardening or her work is very much in line with her new philosophy - post-marriage number three to Marc Anthony - on publicity.

In a rather chequered professional and private life she has often been a little too public with her emotions.

Throughout her previous marriages (her first, to Miami waiter Ojani Noa in 1997, lasted less than a year; her second, to dancer Cris Judd in 2001, broke down after nine months) and her other high-profile relationships (with Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs and Ben Affleck), Jennifer appeared to court publicity.

But her relationship with Marc was different from the start.

She met him in the late 90s after attending one of his concerts (he reportedly told her, “You are going to be my wife one day”).

She believes one reason the relationship has survived is that their friendship gave them a “solid foundation”.

Charismatic and grounded, Marc has much in common with Jennifer - they were both born to Puerto Rican parents and raised in New York - and she credits him with showing her how to have a private life.

“We established early on in our relationship that it wasn’t up for public consumption.

“I didn’t know there was another way to deal with fame. Marc helped me with that.”

The couple spent their first year together “basically in hiding”, and after their wedding in June 2004 they developed an unusual strategy for dealing with the paparazzi: “They know where we live, but we wore them down, little by little, by holding bags over our heads or letting them sit all day without us coming out.

“It becomes a waste of time for them, so they go somewhere else.”

Jennifer’s decision to take three months out for the latter stages of her pregnancy (as reported in the U.S.) is consistent with this more private strategy, but it might also be linked to the fact that she is clearly so uncomfortable with her blooming figure (an unnamed source close to her has said she is “freaked out” by her weight gain).

There have been press reports of her consuming large amounts of “salsa, M&Ms and orange soda”.

Has she, I ask, experienced any cravings?

“Not really, I have been the same as always, eating really well,” she replies cagily.

I carry on, albeit a little hysterically by now, in my attempt to draw Jennifer out by telling her that I had heard of a woman who ate coal during her pregnancy.

“Coal? You mean real coal?” she says, giving me an incredulous look and shaking her head.

There then follows what I can only describe as a pregnant pause.

Two years ago, when I last interviewed Jennifer, she was much more expansive about motherhood, and admitted how much she enjoyed her role as stepmother to Marc’s two daughters from his marriage to former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres and a third child from his relationship with a policewoman.

Has her involvement with her stepchildren, I ask now, given her an idea of how she might achieve a balance between work and motherhood?

“People ask me, ‘Do you think you can have it all?’ and you know what?

“I am like, ‘I don’t know, I would like to think so.”

We will have to wait and see. I think as a person you have to be true to yourself - nobody can tell you what is right for you.

“I think the problem for women is that we are used to pleasing people, and always wanting for everybody to be happy around us, and sometimes we forget about ourselves. It’s important sometimes to think, ‘I know what’s good for me’.”

It’s difficult to imagine Jennifer ever forgetting about herself.

But maybe motherhood will change her, and maybe her coldness today is born of an understandable need to protect herself.

Again and again in the interview she uses the word “evolving”, and as my time with her draws to a close I am left with a strong conviction that she is not enjoying pregnancy.

“I am at the beginning of a huge change.

“I think everyone is constantly changing and evolving, new things are becoming important in our lives all the time - and never more so than for me now.

“The whole growing-up thing, maturing…it’s difficult, but everyone has to do it,” she says, placing a hand (dominated by the vast blue diamond ring that her husband gave her on their first anniversary) on the folds of her dress. “I am so afraid to see this article - with all the double entendres and what have you,” she says, fixing me with a steely glance while simultaneously chuckling as I prepare to leave.

As I walk away she suddenly calls me back.

“Be kind,” she says in a soft, sweet voice that finally reveals her true vulnerability.

• Deseo by Jennifer Lopez is available from leading department stores and pharmacies, price £21 for 30ml eau de parfum.