Jennifer Grey Reveals Why She Chose To Relive The Trauma Of Her Nose Job For New Memoir
Fans have grown accustomed to seeing their favorite famous faces change, and with so many celebrities openly admitting to plastic surgery these days, the practice is no longer so taboo. But actor Jennifer Grey's decision to get rhinoplasty procedures would haunt her for years.
Grey should have been having the time of her life after appearing in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and starring alongside Patrick Swayze in the 1987 classic "Dirty Dancing," but she told People TV, "I'd become famous and couldn't get a job." Grey revealed that she was happy with the way she looked at the time and had no interest in getting a nose job, but her mother, actor Jo Wilder, talked her into it. "She was pragmatic because she was saying, 'Guess what? It's too hard to cast you. Make it easier for them," Grey recalled to People. Both of her parents had gotten nose jobs, and in her memoir "Out of the Corner," Grey shared how her mother loved the results.
After a reluctant Grey decided to follow her mother's advice, she told Parade that her new look injected some life into her floundering career. But in "Out of the Corner," she recalled the fateful moment she noticed a small piece of cartilage was visible on the end of her nose, which required a second surgery to fix. Now, she's sharing why she decided to relive the painful memories.
Jennifer Grey hopes to set the record straight
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times on July 27, Grey opened up about the impact the nose job had on her career and explained why she decided to share the story at the very beginning of "Out of the Corner" memoir. "I thought, well, let me give it to them, give it to them real and explain what horror it was, what a traumatizing event that took my career, took my ability to make a living, and took a turn in my life, I had no agency to undo," she said. Grey also shared, "I had spent too much of my life explaining or telling the real true story of what happened because it just hurt my feelings so much that I would be reduced to a story."
In "Out of the Corner," Jennifer Grey recounted how her second rhinoplasty changed her appearance so profoundly that she became unrecognizable to some of her peers. While attending a Hollywood event for the first time since the surgery, she spotted Michael Douglas, whom she'd previously had a long conversation with during a flight. But when she tried to say hello to him, she recalled, "He stared back at me blankly." Fans reacted to her new look with scorn, and Hollywood seemed to turn its back on Grey. "It was like an episode of 'The Twilight Zone,'" she told People TV.
Happily, the actor eventually got a redemption arc straight out of Hollywood: She got out of that corner and won Season 11 of "Dancing with the Stars" in 2010.