Jennifer Grey had already reached the height of Hollywood fame when she made a decision she hoped would help her career. Instead, the actress says two nose surgeries left her struggling to recognize herself – and changed the way the entertainment industry saw her.
Grey, now 66, played Frances “Baby” Houseman alongside Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. But after the movie’s success, she says her appearance suddenly became a subject of criticism.
In her 2022 memoir, Out of the Corner, she revealed that she was told there were not enough roles for actresses who looked like her, according to Tyla.
Jennifer Grey on her nose job
She also recalled an especially painful encounter with a plastic surgeon, who had seen Dirty Dancing and questioned why she had not already undergone a nose job.
For Grey, the comments were difficult to understand because she had never considered her nose a problem.But after repeatedly being made to feel that her appearance was holding her back, Grey eventually began viewing it differently.
“My so-called ‘problem’ wasn’t really a problem for me, but since it seemed to be a problem for other people, and it didn’t appear to be going away anytime soon, by default it became my problem,” she continued.
“It was as plain as the nose on my face.”
Grey ultimately spoke with her mother and consulted three plastic surgeons before deciding to have an operation that she hoped would simply “fine-tune” her appearance.
But the situation became far more complicated after a second procedure was needed to address an irregularity caused by the first surgery.
The actress later described the result as “truncated” and “dwarfed.” More painfully, people who had known her for years reportedly had trouble recognizing her.
“Overnight I lose my identity and my career,” Grey wrote, per The New York Times.
Suddenly, the woman audiences had instantly recognized as Baby was no longer as recognizable to the public or even people working in Hollywood.
“I was no longer me”
She even recalled an incident in which actor Michael Douglas allegedly failed to recognize her at a film premiere following the surgeries.
“That was the first time I had gone out in public,” Grey recalled, according to Tyla.
“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.”
The experience was especially complicated for Grey because the very thing she had invested years resisting had eventually become something she felt pressured to change.
“In the world’s eyes, I was no longer me.”
Looking back, Grey says she has reached a different place in her life and is working on becoming more confident in who she is.
Speaking to PEOPLE, she explained that she is now trying to step away from the negative story she had created around her own life and choices.
“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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