With the publication of her uncompromising memoir, the actor looks back at the classic coming-of-age movie – and the tension between her and co-star Patrick Swayze
Thirty-five years on from her biggest hit, Dirty Dancing, Jennifer Grey is an open book. Her candid new memoir, Out of the Corner, covers her Hollywood youth, fast fame, frequent relationships, abortions and, yes, multiple cosmetic surgeries with a raw and unfiltered honesty. Grey suggests that memoir-writing should be taught in schools. “It’s a great way to look at your life and question your own narrative,” she says. “Maybe the worst thing to happen to you wasn’t the worst, or some good came from it? I think everybody should try it.”
Grey’s story takes some telling. After finding early success in the mid-80s with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Dirty Dancing, Grey’s upward trajectory was suddenly derailed by a car crash in Ireland that occurred between the latter film’s completion and release. Her then boyfriend and Ferris Bueller co-star, Matthew Broderick, was behind the wheel; the car they were travelling in collided head on with another, killing two women. Broderick was convicted of careless driving and Grey was left with severe whiplash that would affect her for years to come. Soon after, a whirlwind rebound period saw her engaged to Broderick and Johnny Depp within the same month. In the 90s, surgery designed to correct a small imperfection from a previous rhinoplasty operation left her unrecognisable.
