Jennifer Gray didn’t have the best time of her life after her nose job.
In interviews published Monday, Gray – who is releasing her memoir Out of the Corner on May 3 – told The New York Times and People about the two nose jobs she had after appearing in the 1987 hit Dirty Dancing” and how they drastically changed their appearance.
“After Dirty Dancing, I was America’s sweetheart, which I thought would be the key to all my hopes and dreams,” Gray writes in her memoir, according to the Times. “But it didn’t work that way.”
Jennifer Gray attends the premiere of Dirty Dancing in 1987.Ron Galella, Ltd. via Getty Images
In the memoir, Gray recalls that after Dirty Dancing, there still wasn’t “a surplus of roles for actresses who looked like me.” She was apparently told that her nose was “a problem”.
“My so-called ‘problem’ wasn’t really a problem for me, but since it seemed like a problem to other people and didn’t seem to go away anytime soon, it became my problem by default,” she writes, according to the Times. “It was as clear as the nose on my face.”
Gray told People that she is “completely opposed to rhinoplasty” and has “resisted” the surgery for most of her life.
“I really thought it meant surrendering to the enemy camp,” Gray said. “I just thought, ‘I’m good enough. I shouldn’t have to do that.’ I really felt that. ‘I’m beautiful enough.’”
Gray noted that her mother, actor Jo Wilder, had the surgery, as did her father, Oscar winner Joel Grey, and that the “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” star sympathized with her parents’ motivations.
“I understand it was the ’50s. As far as I know, they assimilated,” Gray told People of her Jewish parents. “I understood that you had to change your name and do certain things and it just went normal, didn’t it? … You can’t be a Jew. You know, you can’t look Jewish. You’re just trying to fit into what the group is thinking.”
Gray says her mother loved her but suggested that she get a nose job because of her acting career.
After consulting with her mother and three plastic surgeons, Gray underwent two surgeries to “fine-tune” her nose. The second operation was supposed to correct an imperfection caused by the first, but she said she “cut off” her nose and made it “dwarfed,” according to the Times.
Gray during the 1999 ABC Network Summer TCA press tour.Jim Smeal via Getty Images
Gray told People she knew she’d made a mistake — she calls it “schnozzageddon” — when she ran into actor Michael Douglas at a premiere after her second surgery, and he didn’t recognize her.
“It was the first time I went public. And it became the thing, the idea of being completely invisible from one day to the next. In the eyes of the world, I wasn’t me anymore.”
Gray also recalled when an airline employee looked at her driver’s license, didn’t recognize her, but noted that she had the same name as Jennifer Gray … the actor.
Gray attends the 2021 LA Dance Project annual gala.Tommaso Boddi via Getty Images
When Gray told the clerk, “Actually, it’s me,” she said the woman replied, “I’ve seen ‘Dirty Dancing’ a dozen times. I know Jennifer Grey. And you are not her.”
“Overnight I lose my identity and my career,” Gray wrote in her memoir, according to the Times.
But the actress – who is arguably as famous for her plastic surgery as she is for her beloved role as Baby Houseman on ‘Dirty Dancing’ – says she’s tired of others controlling her narrative and is willing to claim it for herself .
“It’s a new feeling,” she told People. “Getting myself out of the corner – and realizing that I got myself there, through stories, through narratives, that didn’t give me the best life. The story I told myself about how I got here wasn’t a great story. And not quite right. I hadn’t seen how I made decisions.”
Read the full interviews with Gray in the New York Times and People.