B
y the time I was 29, I had
become really f***ing famous.
After Dirty Dancing, I was
America’s sweetheart, which
you would think would be the
key to unlocking all my hopes
and dreams. But it didn’t go that way.
There didn’t seem to be a surplus of
parts for actresses who looked like me.
So I finally did the thing I’d been resist-
ing for a good part of my life. I went for a
nose job, like my mother had suggested
when I was in my early twenties. Right
out of the gate I wanted to be clear about
what I had come for. “The only reason
I’m even in your office is because I need
to broaden my range so I can get work.
So that I can, hopefully, someday be cast
as something... other than a Jew. What
I would want you to do is just fine-tune
my nose, not change it. Leave the bump.”
“You see, Doctor,” I went on, with a
wink, “I was in a little movie called
Dirty Dancing.”
“I saw that movie,” he said. “I remem-
ber thinking, ‘I wonder why that girl
didn’t do her nose?’” He leant in
towards me. “The problem here is, you
have no tip at all.” His blunt, very clean
thumb pushed up against where the tip
of my nose would have been, had I been
born with one. “We would have to build
you a tip, which would act as a tent pole
to hold up the end of your nose. Also,
your septum is so severely deviated I’m
surprised you can breathe at all. We’ll
have to completely reconstruct the
interior of your nose, but you’ll be
amazed, because right now you’re only
breathing at 20 per cent capacity.”
After this brilliant surgeon had his
way with my nose, I finally made real
money for the very first time in my life. I
started working nonstop. It seemed that
all I had ever been missing was the tip
of my nose. I was cast as the female lead
in Wind, a big-budget movie produced
by Francis Ford Coppola and directed
by Carroll Ballard, the visionary behind
The Black Stallion. It was like a dream. I
was playing the first woman ever to sail
in the America’s Cup, something no
woman had yet done in real life. I wore
cable-knit sweaters; the wind whipped
my sun-bleached curls. Let me just say,
she was not Jewish.BOOK EXTRACT
Even after Dirty
Dancing, Jennifer Grey
was still only offered
Jewish roles — now, in
her new memoir, she
explains why she took
drastic action
After shooting for six months out at
sea, I was tan. One day, John Toll, the
brilliant cinematographer, came up to
me and said, “There is this little white
— I don’t know, it looks like a bump, on
the end of your nose. What is that?”
As soon as he said it, I knew what he
was talking about. I’d been telling myself
that it was probably nothing anyone
but me would ever notice. There was
this tiny corner of cartilage close to the
surface protruding from the tip of my
nose. I had this sinking feeling; a dread
came over me. I thought I had closed
the book on this chapter.
I called my trusty doctor who asked
me to come in. Once the swelling had
worn down he said, the graft might
need to be smoothed down, “to fine-
tune the original”.
A day or two later I went to the pri-
vate surgery centre. Coming to, post-op
in the recovery room, I was lolling in the
hazy twilight, that newly out-of-anaes-
thesia feeling where all is right with the
world. The doctor came over to me. “It
went well... Just don’t be alarmed when‘I WAS ONLY GETTING ONE KIND O
Making Dirty Dancing, all I wanted
was to get on with Patrick Swayze. He
was handsome and a great dancer but
something would throw a spanner in
the works every day. Patrick was
chronically late and we would all
have to wait for him. He had issues
with the script and strenuously
resisted saying the now famous line:
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” I
should have accepted him for who he
was. But being cast as a romantic
couple is a bit like entering into an
arranged marriage. You are trapped
in an intimate situation with someone
not necessarily of your choosing.
In the
scene
where
Johnny and Baby
drive off and she is
supposed to be laughing,
exclaiming, “You’re wild!”I was having a hard time laughing on
cue. Patrick was off camera, and I
asked him to help me out. When they
called, “Action,” we started to drive,
and with his eyes sparkling, Patrick
had taken his dick out of his pants.
He knew this couldn’t help but make
me laugh with genuine abandon.
In the scene when we did the lift,
what you see between us is real.
Real respect. Real pride. I knew at
that moment Patrick was the only
person who could have played that
part. I wish he were
alive. I wish we
could reminisce.
I wish I could tell him
I’m sorry for the times
I was judgmental. That I
was scared and in over my
head. How lucky I feel to have
had him as my Baby’s one and
only Johnny.HOW PATRICK SWAYZE MADE ME LAUGH ON CUE
SHUTTERSTOCK8 1 May 2022