The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-01)

we take the bandages off. Initially, it

might look a bit high because of how I

taped it, but don’t worry, it’ll drop.”

When the nurse had finished cleaning

me up, she cheerfully handed me a

mirror. What was it I was looking at?

The way the nose was orientated on my

face was all wrong. Twin unfamiliar holes

staring back at me. Are those my nostrils?

This nose looked truncated. Something

about the proportion was off. The place-

ment. It was like I was on mushrooms,

having a bad hallucinogenic trip.

The doctor came in and coolly stud-

ied my face. “I don’t think I’ve ever

seen such a dramatic change in anyone

before.” He asked the nurse to hand

him a roll of Scotch tape. He wanted

me to place a piece of tape across the

end of my nose from cheek to cheek.

This primitive technique was supposed

to “train” the tip to drop and encour-

age a sexy little indentation just north

of the graft. The doctor told me to tape

my nose like this every night. I was

probably crying, or trying hard not to,

because it really hurt my nose to cry.

A few weeks later I was invited to

attend an event. As I walked the gaunt-

let of paparazzi, for the first time since

Dirty Dancing opened, the photogra-

phers looked right through me. I

walked the endless length of the red

carpet without anyone so much as

looking at me. Once I’d settled into my

seat, I spotted Michael Douglas in the

row in front of me, so I leant forward

over his shoulder to say hello.

I’d bonded with him on a ten-hour

plane ride home from London, where

we’d sat side by side talking. “Hey,

Michael.” He stared back at me blankly.

“It’s Jennifer. Jennifer Grey?”

The first time I saw my father after

this, I was hoping to hear that I looked

beautiful. After ten minutes of pre-

dinner small talk, I finally got up the

nerve to ask him point-blank, “What do

you think?” He said, “I think it would

probably be best if you just didn’t go

out in public for a while.”

In the world’s eyes, I was no longer

me. I had unwittingly joined the Wit-

ness Protection Program. And if that

wasn’t bad enough, soon I would be

due up at Francis Ford Coppola’s Napa

Valley estate to shoot additional scenes

for Wind.

I arrived in Napa a few weeks later,

wearing a “funny nose and glasses” to

greet everyone. They ended up having

to shoot me through mirrors, from a

distance, scrambling to make it work.

But it didn’t. When the movie came out,

in the press Carroll Ballard declared my

botched nose job the reason for the

movie’s commercial and critical failure.

I knew how much shit people were

talking behind my back, about how I

represented everything silly and vain

and tragic in showbusiness. I felt so

much shame. To the outside world, this

imagined compulsion to eradicate my

defining facial feature became a caution-

ary tale, a punchline. Eventually, it

became one of the single best things that

ever happened to me. But I didn’t know

that at the time. c

After the

surgery my

father told

me it would

be best if I

didn’t go out

in public for

a while

Extract from

Out of the

Corner: A

Memoir by

Jennifer Grey,

published on

Tuesday by

Ballantine

at £19.99

It takes two

Jennifer Grey with

Patrick Swayze in

Dirty Dancing.

Above right: Grey

with Matthew

Modine in Wind

F PART — SO I GOT A NOSE JOB’

ALAMY

1 May 2022 9