Jennifer Grey[a] was born on March 26, 1960 in New York City to former actress/singer Jo Wilder (née Brower) and stage and Academy Award-winning screen actor Joel Grey. [3][4] Her paternal grandfather was comedian and musician Mickey Katz. Grey's parents both came from Jewish families.[5][6][7][8]
The following year she reunited with Patrick Swayze, her Red Dawn co-star, to play Frances "Baby" Houseman in Dirty Dancing, a coming-of-age love story: spending the summer at a Catskills resort with her family, Frances "Baby" Houseman falls in love with the resort's dance instructor, Johnny Castle. The low-budget film was a surprise hit, was the first film to sell one million copies on video,[15] and is considered a classic.[16] Paid $50,000[17] for her role, the film came to define Grey's career, and she was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the role.[18]
Despite the success of Dirty Dancing, Grey felt that her looks would place restrictions on the type of future roles she would be considered for.[17] After consulting her mother and three plastic surgeons in the early 1990s, she underwent two rhinoplasty procedures. The second was necessary to correct an irregularity caused by the first operation and ended up more extensive than what Grey had expected.[17][19] This resulted in a nose that caused even close friends to fail to recognize her, and the major change in her appearance affected her career.[20] Of the experience, she said, "I went in the operating room a celebrity—and came out anonymous. It was like being in a witness protection program or being invisible."[21][22] Grey recalled in a 2020 interview that an airline employee who checked her identity refused to believe that she and the actress the employee knew from Dirty Dancing were one and the same.[17] Grey briefly considered changing her name in order to start her career anew, but ultimately decided against this.[23]
From March 1999 until January 2000, Grey starred as herself in the short-lived ABCsitcomIt's Like, You Know..., which satirized her much-publicized nose job as a running gag.[24]
Grey was a contestant on season eleven of Dancing With the Stars. She was partnered with professional dancer Derek Hough.[26] She came out very strong at first, frequently topping the leaderboard. However, injuries, stress, and exhaustion took their toll on Grey, and for a couple of weeks, she fell behind. In week seven, however, she improved, tying with previous frontrunner Brandy Norwood. On November 23, 2010, Grey and her partner Hough won the competition, making her the oldest female winner in the competition.[27][28]
From 2014 to 2017, Grey portrayed Judy Meyers on Red Oaks.[32] In 2018, Grey co-starred in the film Untogether; the film was released on February 8, 2019.[33]
Grey also appeared at the 2015 Tony Awards alongside her father Joel, presenting a performance from the musical Fun Home.
Ballantine Books published Grey's memoir, Out of the Corner, on May 3, 2022.[17]
Personal life
On August 5, 1987, Grey suffered severe whiplash in a car collision in Tempo, Northern Ireland, while vacationing with actor Matthew Broderick, whom she had begun dating in semi-secrecy during the filming of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The crash, the event through which their relationship became public, occurred when Broderick, at the wheel of a rented BMW, crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with a Volvo driven by a local mother and daughter, Margaret Doherty, 63, and Anna Gallagher, 28, who were killed instantly. Broderick was convicted of careless driving and fined $175.[11][34]Dirty Dancing was released a few weeks after the collision, catapulting Grey to fame. But she has said that her grief and survivor's guilt over the crash prevented her from enjoying the film's success and led her to withdraw from acting for some time.[35]
According to a September 2015 Grey profile in Jewish Journal, Grey had recently reconnected with Judaism, saying, "I love being a Jew. I've gotten a lot more Jewish in the last five years because of my daughter's bat mitzvah, and I realized I really care about being a Jew."[41]
Prior to her 2010 appearances on Dancing with the Stars, Grey had a physical examination to ensure that she was fit enough to compete and saw a doctor to address chronic neck problems caused by the car crash decades earlier.[42] Her spinal cord was compressed and her surgeon placed a titanium plate in her neck to stabilize it. He also found a cancerous nodule on her thyroid that he removed in 2009.[43] Grey said she believed the cancer was caught before it could metastasize and that she was now cancer-free.[44]
^a: Contrary to previous versions of this article, and some of the sources cited in it, Grey indicated in a February 8, 2012tweet on her verified Twitter account that she does not have a middle name.
^Sheridan, Peter (September 25, 2010). "What became of Patrick's Dirty Dancing partner?". The Express. Scotland. pp. 36–37.
^"Briefly". USA Today. December 6, 2001, p. LIFE, 5D
^Tutelian, Louise (May 23, 2008). "Putting Out a 'Willkommen' Mat". The New York Times. "Escapes", Page 1. Mr. Grey's granddaughter Stella, age 6, lives nearby [Pacific Palisades] with her parents, Jennifer Grey and her husband, the actor Clark Gregg.