In the mid-to-late 1980s, Jennifer Grey's career was on the way up. She had successful supporting turns in films like Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Red Dawn before landing the role that would define her career — that of Frances "Baby" Houseman in Dirty Dancing. However, she wasn't able to follow up Dirty Dancing with a role as iconic as Baby, even though she has continued to act in movies and TV in the decades since. From her high-profile relationship with Johnny Depp to her regrettable surgeries, let's take a look at what happened to Jennifer Grey, who played Baby in Dirty Dancing.
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PeopleTranscript
00:00You may have first seen her in Red Dawn or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but there's no denying
00:04that Jennifer Grey's most iconic role is Frances' baby houseman in 1987's Dirty Dancing.
00:10So just what has Jennifer Grey been up to since carrying that watermelon?
00:14We've got the answers.
00:15Almost Mrs. Johnny Depp
00:17After dating Matthew Broderick, Grey was linked to another Hollywood actor, none other than
00:21Johnny Depp.
00:22While they were only together for a year and famously appeared in a single photograph together,
00:26the two were actually engaged.
00:28Given how things have worked out for Depp, we'd say the actress may have dodged a bullet.
00:33The nose job
00:34It was 1989 when Grey got her first nose job, a decision that People notes was a choice
00:38that most ambitious people would not have made, as it radically altered her appearance
00:42in the long run.
00:43But that could have been because fame wasn't really what Grey was after.
00:46She told People,
00:47"...I really felt like I wanted to be a wife and a mom."
00:49And as the face of baby houseman was fading away forever, in the early 90s, a piece of
00:53cartilage broke off, forcing Grey to undergo a second nose job.
00:56While the first may have been a shock, the second made her virtually unrecognizable.
01:00According to the New York Daily News, while she was sedated, the doctor decided to turn
01:03a minor change into a major change.
01:05While her career seemed to be on a downswing already, Grey went from being a known name
01:09and face to what she called complete obscurity.
01:13Relative unknown
01:14To Grey's credit, she didn't let her second appearance-altering nose job stop her from
01:18working.
01:19She made a guest appearance on Friends and Fallen Angels and landed the 1995 rom-com
01:23Lover's Knot.
01:24But as her parts got smaller and smaller, Grey realized just how much of an impact her
01:27drastically different appearance was having on her success.
01:30No longer did Jennifer Grey mean the same thing it meant in 1987, fresh off of Dirty
01:34Dancing.
01:35It was around this time that Grey considered changing her name altogether.
01:39According to Newsweek, after the nose job incident, Grey invented the moniker and personality
01:42Wanda West, reportedly named after Grey's old street Wanda in Hollywood.
01:46The idea, as Grey told Newsweek, was that Wanda West could potentially get more roles
01:50than Grey herself was getting at the time.
01:52She said,
01:54I think it could have worked.
01:55This town is so built on Who's the New Face, and no one would have ever known it was me.
02:00True love
02:01Grey finally found true love in 2001, when she met Clark Gregg, who you may now know
02:05from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Martha's Vineyard.
02:08The couple dated for about a year prior to getting married and were wed by Gregg's father
02:11Robert, an Episcopal minister.
02:13The couple's daughter, Stella, was born five months later, and as Grey told People,
02:16it was very hard to get me out of the house because I didn't want to miss any of it.
02:20It was all about family, friends.
02:23Health issues
02:24After agreeing to join Dancing with the Stars in 2010, a compulsory physical revealed she
02:28had a dangerously compressed spinal cord from injuries she sustained in a 1987 car accident.
02:33Then during spinal surgery, her doctor became worried about a lump Grey had been told was
02:37benign.
02:38It was, instead, thyroid cancer.
02:39Grey had two more surgeries to have her thyroid removed entirely and is now cancer-free.
02:44The actress joined the 11th season of Dancing with the Stars, telling People that getting
02:47back to dancing and the spotlight was something she had missed.
02:50She said,
02:51"'It's like I've been starving myself because of what people might think of me.
02:53This is like eating a delicious steak after 23 years of fasting."
02:57After rupturing a disc the night before the finale, Grey still pulled it out for the win.
03:01She told People,
03:02"'I didn't even think about winning when I first started.
03:04This is so unbelievable.
03:05I feel so grateful, so blessed, that I had this opportunity to spend three months learning
03:09to dance and getting paid for it.
03:10I don't know that there's any experience that will ever be anything like this again."
03:15Dirty Dancing remake
03:16With the critically panned Dirty Dancing remake still fresh in people's minds, you may be
03:20wondering why Grey wasn't a part of it.
03:22She told The Hollywood Reporter,
03:23"'I was asked to do something on that show, and I was flattered because I always want
03:27to be asked because it's nice to want to be included.
03:29But for me, it would be sacrosanct for me to do it because it didn't feel appropriate
03:33to me.'"
03:34Unfortunately, it didn't work for viewers, either.
03:35The Atlantic called it a sad, strange production, while Entertainment Weekly said the remake
03:39itself belongs in a corner.
03:42What's next for Jennifer Grey?
03:43It's clear that nose job or not, Grey's got talent.
03:46So what's next on the docket for the star?
03:48Deadline reported in January 2017 that her Amazon series Red Oaks has been renewed for
03:52a third and final season.
03:54She'll also appear in upcoming indie film Untogether alongside Billy Crystal and Jamie
03:57Dornan, and will be providing the voice of Edna in 2018's animated Duck, Duck, Goose.
04:02While it's unclear exactly what other projects Grey might line up in the next several years,
04:06she's made one thing perfectly clear.
04:08We haven't seen the last of her.