Jennifer Grey opens up about her lengthy career and incredible life in a candid new interview with People.
The actress, who famously starred as Baby Houseman alongside Patrick Swayze’s Johnny Castle in 1987’s “Dirty Dancing”, talks to the magazine about no longer wanting to be “in a corner,” as quoted in the much-loved film.
The 62-year-old says of wanting to take up as much space as possible: “That’s a new feeling. To take myself out of the corner — and to recognize that I have been putting myself there, through story, through narratives that weren’t giving me the best life.
“The story I was telling myself about how I got here was not a great story. And not entirely true. I hadn’t seen the ways in which I’d made choices.”
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Grey, who is set to release her memoir Out of the Corner on May 3, also discusses her rhinoplasty in the tell-all chat.
She says of Michael Douglas not recognizing her at a premiere after her second nose job: “That was the first time I had gone out in public. And 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. And the weird thing was that thing that I resisted my whole life, and the thing I was so upset with my mother for always telling me I should do, my nose, I really thought it was capitulating. I really thought it meant surrendering to the enemy camp. I just thought, ‘I’m good enough. I shouldn’t have to do this.’ That’s really what I felt. ‘I’m beautiful enough.'”
Grey adds of her mother, Jo Wilder, suggesting she got a nose job from very early on in her life: “She loves me, loved me, always has, and 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. It wasn’t like, ‘you’re not pretty.’ It’s like, ‘guess what? If you don’t want to be an actor, okay. But if you wanna be an actor…’
“But when I was a kid, I was completely anti-rhinoplasty. I mean it was like my religion. I was like, I loved that my parents did it. I understand it was the 50s. I understand they were assimilating. I understood that you had to change your name and you had to do certain things, and it was just normalized, right? 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 group think.”
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Grey shares of not having chemistry with her “Dirty Dancing” star Swayze: “The same way Baby and Johnny were not supposed to be together, they weren’t natural… a natural match, right? And we weren’t a natural match.
“And the fact that we needed to be a natural match created a tension. Because normally when someone’s not a natural, you… both people move on, but we were forced to be together.
“And our being forced to be together created a kind of a synergy, or like a friction. I actually just had a thought about Patrick. I feel like if I could say anything to him now I would say, ‘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.'”
She continues of everyone wanting them to be together, but how he just wasn’t her type: “And the weird thing was, it’s like, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I mean, I was not lacking.
“And he was married and very in love with his wife. Whatever he was doing, I was not… I was very busy with Matthew [Broderick]. Like, what could be more different.”
Plus, Grey, who dated Broderick in the ’80s, talks about then dating Johnny Depp.
“There was some heat. It was a f**king bonfire. It was literally like, ‘Are you f**king kidding me? Are you f**king kidding me? I’ve never seen a guy like this,'” she gushes.
“And energetically, what it was like being with him, it was like, ‘Oh, I’m being totally, totally compensated for the s**t I just went through.'”
