Jennifer Grey Opens Up About Nose Jobs: ‘I Was No Longer Me’

Actor Jennifer Grey is reflecting on her long career and the effects of getting two nose jobs at a young age a few years after she made her Hollywood breakout performance in Dirty Dancing.

The nose jobs caused Grey to be unrecognizable to friends afterward, and her appearance was mocked publicly for years to come. She discusses it extensively in her upcoming memoir Out Of The Corner. “It became the thing, the idea of being completely invisible, from one day to the next. In the world’s eyes, I was no longer me,” she told People.

She said that the pressure to get the work done came from her mother, former actress Jo Wilder, who had Jennifer with the actor Joel Grey. “She was pragmatic because she was saying, ‘Guess what? It’s too hard to cast you. Make it easier for them.’ And then I did and she was right.” She also noted her parents lived in the standards of the 50s, and added “they were assimilating … You can’t be gay. You can’t be Jewish. You know, you can’t look Jewish. You’re just trying to fit into whatever is the groupthink.”

Grey also spoke about her iconic performance as Baby in Dirty Dancing and revealed that she first had a hard time performing as a romantic opposite with Patrick Swayze because “we weren’t a natural match.” Since they had to keep performing together for days, however, Grey said chemistry formed from “kind of a synergy, or like a friction.”

She said if Swayze were alive today, she would tell him “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t just appreciate and luxuriate in who you were, instead of me wishing you were more like what I wanted you to be.” Grey also teased a Dirty Dancing sequel in the works at Lionsgate that was light on plot details. “We’ve been working on it for a couple of years,” she said. “And I know in my heart, I would love to give fans or a young, new audience an experience that would never that, but has the same kind of underpinnings.”