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‘Dirty Dancing’ Star Jennifer Grey’s Plastic Surgery Quotes: She Says Nose Jobs Left Her ‘Invisible’
Actress Jennifer Grey is getting candid about how having two nose jobs caused Hollywood to turn its back on the star. After a memorable turn in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and becoming a leading lady in 1987’s Dirty Dancing, she recalls in her new memoir, Out of the Corner, the pain of becoming “invisible” following the rhinoplasty work.
“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 down that way,” Jennifer writes, noting that there wasn’t “a surplus of parts for actresses who looked like me” and was told by others that her nose was “a problem.”
“My so-called ‘problem’ wasn’t really a problem for me, but since it seemed to be a problem for other people, and it didn’t appear to be going away anytime soon, by default it became my problem,” she continues. “It was as plain as the nose on my face.” She ended up undergoing two rhinoplasties that forever altered her look, rendering her unrecognizable to audiences.
The actress told People in an interview promoting her memoir that her mother, former actress Jo Wilder, pressured her from an early age to have work done on her nose.
“But when I was a kid, I was completely anti-rhinoplasty,” she said. “I mean it was like my religion. I loved that my parents did it [underwent rhinoplasty]. I understand it was the 50s. I understand they were assimilating. I understood that you had to change your name and you had to do certain things, and it was just normalized, right? 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.”
The Dollface star recalled to the publication how the first time she appeared at a Hollywood red carpet premiere after getting her second nose job, actor Michael Douglas no longer recognized 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,” Jennifer explained. “In the world’s eyes, I was no longer me. and the weird thing was that thing that I resisted my whole life, and the thing I was so upset with my mother for always telling me I should do my nose. I really thought it was capitulating. I really thought it meant surrendering to the enemy camp. I just thought, ‘I’m good enough. I shouldn’t have to do this.’ That’s really what I felt. ‘I’m beautiful enough.'”
Jennifer has long been open about how getting work done on her nose completely derailed her acting career. “I went into the operating room a celebrity and came out anonymous. It was the nose job from hell. I’ll always be this once-famous actress nobody recognizes because of a nose job,” Jennifer revealed to the U.K’s The Mirror in 2012.
