From the soundtrack, the chemistry of Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, and of course, the dancing, Dirty Dancing defied all expectations and proved that a movie involving an excessive amount of gyrating could go down in history as one of the defining flicks of the 80’s.
While the film made a stars out of the two leads, only Swayze parlayed that buzz into a blockbuster career while Grey kinda just disappeared off the face of the earth.
So what exactly happened? How did one of the hottest actresses in the 80’s, one who appeared in iconic films like Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, lose it all?
Well it’s all because of a nose job.
After her career cooled off a bit during the early 90s, Grey decided to undergo a nose job in an attempt to revive her slowly flagging career with a new look.
But instead of having film roles being offered to her left and right following the surgery, her new schnoz had the complete opposite effect. Grey looked completely different after her nose job, so much so that even her close friends couldn’t recognise her.
To give you an idea how drastically different Grey looks pre and post nose job, here she is in Dirty Dancing:
And here she is some time after her rhinoplasties:
Yup. Subtle yet somehow almost unrecognisable.
Grey basically had to start her career from scratch and even thought about changing names before deciding against it. It’s a tough thing to go from appearing in two smash hit films, dancing with Patrick Swayze and scoring a Golden Globe nomination in doing so to competing with newbies for tiny bit roles in forgettable TV shows.
In the words of Grey herself: “I went into the operating theatre a celebrity and came out anonymous. It was like being in a witness protection program or being invisible.”
Probably the most notable thing she’s done in her post-rhinopasty career is appear on Dancing With The Stars, where she dusted off some old Dirty Dancing moves and proceeded to win the entire competition. But other than that, she sadly hasn’t been able to reach the same level of fame as her 80s heyday.
You can’t put Baby in a corner but it turns out you can make her disappear with a nose job.