Almost 40 years since becoming a pop culture icon in Dirty Dancing, Jennifer Grey is having the time of her life as the proud mom to her baby, Stella Gregg, whom she shares with Marvel actor Clark Gregg.
The young woman, now 22, has the same brooding eyes as her mother and every day looks more like the woman who stole our hearts as “Baby” in the 1980s.
Keep reading to learn more about Stella!
Jennifer Grey, now 63, is the daughter of the Oscar-winning Cabaret star, Joel Grey. With Hollywood in her blood, Grey started acting when she was 19, mostly in commercials and then small roles in films.
Grey had her breakthrough role playing the sister of Matthew Broderick’s character in the teen slacker film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The 1986 classic served as a launchpad for the 26-year-old Grey, who was cast in the iconic film Dirty Dancing the next year. Starring alongside the late Patrick Swayze, whose fans gushed over his impressive dance moves, Grey played Frances “Baby” Houseman, a career-defining role that earned her a Golden Globe nomination.
The movie had a huge influence on pop culture with dance moves that are still attempted today, and references like Swayze’s memorable line, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
“I mean, I wish anytime I went into a nice restaurant and asked for a table they said, ‘Well I’m sure you don’t want one in the corner,’” Grey joked at an event in Los Angeles. “But only a fool would be tired of talking about a movie that has given this many people this much pleasure for this many years. That would be very ungrateful. That’s not me and I am just moved to tears by being in the presence of this music and celebrating it.”
Despite her huge success with Dirty Dancing, Grey then slipped away from the spotlight, leaving fans wondering where she went.
In 1989 she had rhinoplasty, which completely changed her distinctive appearance, making her unrecognizable.
“I went into the operating room a celebrity and came out anonymous,” she said. “It was the nose job from hell. I’ll always be this once-famous actress nobody recognises because of a nose job.”
Since her surgery, she had a few guest appearances on TV shows like House and Friends, where she played a high school friend of Jennifer Anniston’s Rachel, as well as made-for-TV movies A Case for Murder and Eyes of a Witness.
In 2010, the star of the West Side Waltz used her incredible dance moves to win Dancing with the Stars.
In 2001 she married Clark Gregg, 61, who’s known for his role as Phil Coulson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Gregg, whom she divorced in 2020, she shares daughter Stella Gregg, now 22.
Stella, who stayed out of the spotlight in her earlier years, has walked many red carpets with her famous parents and in 2013, she also small roles with her dad in the Marvel TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and in the 2013 film Trust Me, which her dad starred, wrote and directed.
Grey, the author of “Out of the Corner,” appears to be incredibly close with her daughter. The two even have matching tattoos.
Their mother-daughter ink–Stella on her forearms and mom on her shoulder–reads “beaux rêves,” which translated from French means “sweet dreams.”
And, according to Grey’s post that shows the new body art, Gregg, the “best ex ever,” is credited in making the tattoos happen: “Oh yeah and @clarkgregg for making it happen!!”
Frequently sharing posts about Stella on social media, the Red Dawn actor recently captured the attention of fans who praise the young woman’s beauty and note the similarities she has with her mom.
Shared by Stella and Grey, the post features a series of beautiful photos of Stella, one contemplative closeup, a second where she’s wearing overalls with a large stick propped over her shoulder, and the last where she’s wearing her rainboots in a shallow stream.
Stella captioned the same post “on my way to harvest a vegetable,” and Grey, the author of “Out of the Corner,” writes on hers, “i feel sorry for whatever turnip my girl’s after.”
“[She] definitely looks like you in the 1st picture..reminds me so much of you when you played baby,” said one fan. Another writes, “Your literal twin,” and a third shares, “Beautiful like her mama u are absolutely gorgeous.”
One thing the mom-daughter duo don’t have in common is their appreciation for Dirty Dancing.
If you’re wondering what Stella thinks about the film that made her mom a megastar, Grey says, “I think she saw it once. She did not like it and did not want to watch it again,” Grey said about Stella seeing the film. “I don’t know if she ever watched it again. She did not want see me dancing with anybody but Daddy and it bugged her.”
Jennifer Grey is a fantastic actor and we love her in Dirty Dancing! She looks totally different after her surgery, and if you saw her on Friends, you might have been shocked when you learned it was her. Still, we’re happy to see her on social media and love seeing updates on Stella Gregg!
We look forward to hearing more from Stella as she develops her Hollywood career!
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- Jennifer Grey felt ”invisible” after facial transformation – her ”nose job from hell” made her ‘anonymous’
