The actress is back in the spotlight after Lionsgate confirmed that she will once again portray Baby Houseman in a new sequel to Dirty Dancing. According to official information, the film is currently in development and Grey will not only star in it but also serve as an executive producer, with the goal of revisiting the story from a current perspective without losing the essence of the 1987 romantic classic.
In her attempt to freeze time through surgeries is when identity issues arise that affect numerous showbiz stars. Initially, Grey's procedures were for health reasons, but gradually her face had nothing to do with the virginal daughter of Joel Grey, an Oscar winner for his role as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret (1972).
At 27 years old, with $50,000 in her pocket, a meager fee considering that the movie grossed $213 million and sold over five million soundtrack albums, Jennifer Grey was destined to be part of the new Olympus of rising stars. But everything changed.
When in 1989 she succumbed to the suggestions of her mother, actress and singer Jo Wilder, and three surgeons, she was not aware that she had just made a pact with the (same) devil as Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray. Life's paradoxes. Both surnames are pronounced the same in English.
The first surgery was a failure and she underwent a second one to correct the damages. Things got worse. When she looked in the mirror, she didn't recognize herself: "It was like entering a witness protection program." Far from becoming paranoid, the actress pinched herself several times to see if she was hallucinating. But it wasn't necessary. She experienced it firsthand.
At her first public appearance at a movie premiere, Michael Douglas didn't recognize her and"that situation made me invisible." From that moment on, she began to regret for a lifetime. On another occasion, when she showed her passport to an airline employee, she was told that there happened to be an actress with the same name as her. The invisibility was already palpable at a popular level. Other aesthetic attempts like those of Michael Jackson or Donatella Versace did not console her.
After turning 30, Jennifer Grey's career was never the same.She was barely called for auditions and in the films she participated in - If the Shoe Fits (1990), Wind (1992), Hollywood Homicide (2011) - the sorrows weighed more than the glories.
Privately, the Dirty Dancing star struggled to find stability. She briefly dated Michael J. Fox, who later married Tracy Pollan, a friend from Grey's private school. She then dated Matthew Broderick - Sarah Jessica Parker's soulmate for over 30 years - with whom she was involved in a tragic incident in the summer of 1987 during a road trip in Northern Ireland. Allegedly, the actor crossed into the opposite lane, resulting in the instant death of a mother and her daughter in a head-on collision.
Jennifer distanced herself from the film industry: "My mindset had changed. My priorities were no longer the same." She was emotionally scarred. She also dated Johnny Depp and former Bill Clinton aide, George Stephanopoulos. Finally, she married actor and director Clark Gregg in 2001, from whom she divorced in 2021 and with whom she has a daughter, Stella.
After all she has faced in life, Jennifer Grey has opened up in her interviews by stating that during the filming of Dirty Dancing there was no connection between her and Patrick Swayze, who passed away in 2009 from pancreatic cancer. The producers forced them to film and the tension spilled over off-camera. Reflecting on this, she now admits that if she had the chance, she would apologize: "If I could say anything now, I would say: 'I'm sorry I couldn't appreciate and delight in who you were, instead of wishing you were more like I wanted you to be."For his part, Swayze stated in his biography that "working with Grey was extremely irritating" because she refused to rehearse scenes that didn't go well and would cry if anything negative was said about her.