Dirty Dancing Star Jennifer Grey Opened Up About Plastic Surgery Regret

After making her big breakthrough in John Hughes’ high school classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Jennifer Grey became a household name thanks to her leading role in Dirty Dancing. Starring opposite Patrick Swayze, Grey played Frances "Baby" Houseman – a strong-minded teenager who falls for resort dancer Johnny Castle on a family holiday. The role won Grey a Golden Globe nomination, and remains her defining role 35 years on. Post-Dirty Dancing, however, Grey’s subsequent projects didn’t garner the same cult status, and the actor has now spoken out about the regret she feels around the rhinoplasty after the release of Dirty Dancing.

"I spent so much energy trying to figure out what I did wrong, why I was banished from the kingdom,” she revealed in her upcoming memoir, Out Of The Corner. “That's a lie. I banished myself." Discussing her soon-to-be-released book with People magazine, Grey opened up about a mean remark that the artist Andy Warhol once made about her nose. “Her dad got a nose job. Why wouldn't he make sure she had one too," she claims he said. She also revealed that her mother, also an actor, encouraged her to have plastic surgery from a young age. “When I was a kid, I was completely anti-rhinoplasty,” Grey said. “I mean it was like my religion. I loved that my parents did it [both underwent rhinoplasty], I understand it was the ‘50s. I understand they were assimilating.”

Grey also highlighted Hollywood’s history of toxic beauty standards and anti-semitism as two reasons why she was eventually persuaded. “She [Grey’s mother] was pragmatic because she was saying, 'Guess what? It's too hard to cast you. Make it easier for them.’”

“I understood that you had to change your name and you had to do certain things, and it was just normalised, right?” she added. “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."

She also opened up about attending a film premiere post-surgery, where her old friend Michael Douglas didn’t recognise her. "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. Overnight, I lose my identity and my career.” Her memoir, Out Of The Corner, will be published on May 3.