Jennifer Grey: nose job ruined her Hollywood career

More than three decades after its premiere, “Dirty Danicing” is considered a classic of the 1980s and one of the most successful films of all time.

Set in 1963, it tells the story of the teenager Frances “Baby” Houseman (interpreted by Jennifer Gray), who has an affair during a hot summer with the dance instructor Johnny Castleplayed by Patrick Swayze.

“Dirty Dancing” grossed more than $214 million worldwide and won an Oscar for the song “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”

Audiences fell in love with the characters, the music, and the iconic dance routines, including the famous “lift up.”

The success of the film launched to stardom patrick swayze, who died of cancer in 2009 at the age of 57. But the same did not happen with Jennifer Grey, who in a few years disappeared from the public scene, as if the earth had swallowed her.

This 2022 Gray has published her memoirs, in which she tells the reason why her film career did not prosper: a nose operation that left her unrecognizable to the general public and that made the big movie studios stop offering her roles.

The dilemma of the operation

In “Out Of The Corner” Gray – who is now 62 years old – recounts how at the beginning of his career, while he was struggling to get roles, his mother, also an actress Jo Wilder, suggested that the lack of work could have something to do with his “Jewish” nose.

The actress also thought that this could be true, but she had always refused to undergo rhinoplasty.

“I was almost thirty years old and had spent much of my adult life trying to love and accept myself as I was,” says the actress. “So going under the knife felt dangerously close to admitting defeat.”

After the huge success of “Dirty Dancing” she decided to take the plunge and told the renowned plastic surgeon who was going to operate on her to “fine tune” her nose but leave the characteristic “bulge” on her septum.

The procedure was a success, and Gray began landing more roles and earning money for the first time in his life.

In 1992, while filming “Wind,” the film’s cinematographer noticed a piece of cartilage protruding from the tip of his nose.

The actress spoke with her surgeon and agreed to fix it. The idea was simply not to see that piece of cartilage, but the result of that second operation would change his life forever.

Once he was able to remove the bandages, Gray was shocked by what he saw in the mirror. “I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I knew something bad had happened.”

The second operation changed her appearance so much that the general public no longer recognized her.

“It seemed like I had committed an unforgivable crime: deliberately stripping away the one thing that made me special,” says Grey, who was aware that his original nose was also a physical connection to his Jewish identity.

“Bottoms out”

In an interview with journalist Katie Couric last May, Gray reflected on what had happened.

According to him, the families of his parents were Jews originally from Eastern Europe and when they arrived in the US they changed their last name. And for Jews working in show business (his father is “Cabaret” Oscar-winning actor Joel Grey), changing one’s nose “was normal and considered smart.”

“My mother knew how show business worked and she thought it would be easier for me to get roles, because there weren’t many roles for girls who looked like me and were Jewish. There weren’t many opportunities and she wanted me to have more opportunities. She wanted that I had the career that she didn’t have.

According to the actress, after performing the first operation “he did not stop working and it turned out that his mother “was right”.

When he had to undergo the second operation, he explicitly told the surgeon that he liked his nose and that he “wanted a strong nose.”

“After the second operation (the surgeon) took off my bandages and something was wrong. He looked at me and said: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a dramatic change‘”.

“I don’t know what he did but he changed the proportion of my face (…) he looked different in a way that didn’t make sense,” the actress said in the interview with Katie Couric.

“It was the hardest, loneliest, most confusing time of my life. It was so devastating. And to be so misunderstood around the world for decades… The lack of generosity and humanity hurt me so much.”

According to Grey, after the operation “he could not find a job” or survive.

“I decided to throw in the towel. I never again asked anyone to give me their approval or like me.”

From then on, he had to figure out who he was “without that character, without ‘Dirty Dancing'”.

“And in that loneliness I hit rock bottom. And I understood who I was and how much I was worth in a way that no one could ever take it from me again.”

According to Grey, her loved ones saw her go through it all “and it had to be very difficult for them.”

The actress – who is now working on the production of a sequel to “Dirty dancing” – spent years trying to understand why the public turned their back on her after her change in appearance.

“At some point I thought that perhaps they felt that (the character) Baby was them and they felt very identified with her, because there are very few films in which the protagonist looks like them, or is not perfect or is more human… and it hurt them that (with the operation) I was saying something about them, that they weren’t enough.”

“I spent too many years thinking about this and not finding an answer. I just realized that no one was going to rescue me (…) It was a drama and I realized that he was a very strong person“Grey recounted.

“All the hard things that have happened to me, have happened to me and have changed me and I would not want to be another person (…) Now I am happier than ever and I feel very grateful to have survived. And I do not think about myself or about my nose. I think about what I have contributed in this life, as a mother, as a friend,…”.

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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-62500328, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-08-11 17:20:05

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Jennifer Grey: nose job ruined her Hollywood career