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It is considered Dirty Dancing a classic from the 80s and one of the most successful films of all time. Set in 1963, it tells the story of teenage Frances “Baby” Houseman (played by Jennifer Gray), who has a hot summer relationship with dance instructor Johnny Castle, played by Patrick Swayze.
Dirty dance grossed over $ 214 million worldwide and was also an Oscar winner for best song. (I had) The time of my life. The audience fell in love with the characters, the music and the iconic dance routines, including the famous “lift up”.
The success of the film brought Patrick Swayze to stardom, who died of cancer in 2009 at the age of 57. But his partner, Jennifer Gray, who disappeared from the public scene in a few years, did not have the same luck.
Jennifer Gray, in “Dirty Dancing”, with her original nose.
The memories that explain everything
This year, Jennifer Gray released her memoirs, in which she talks about the reasons that made her film career fail: a nose operation that left her unrecognizable to the general public and this meant that the big film studios stopped offering him roles.
In the book Out of the corner (out of the cornerwhich alludes to one of the film’s most memorable phrases), Gray – now 62 – recounts how early in his career, while struggling for roles, his mother, also actress Jo Wilder, suggested that he the lack of work may have something to do with his “Jewish” nose.
A great couple. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray, in “Dirty Dancing”.
“At that point, I was nearly 30 and had spent most of my adult life trying to love and accept myself as I was,” says the actress in the book. “So going under the knife seemed dangerously close to admitting defeat.”
However, after the huge success of Dirty dance He decided to take the plunge and spoke to a famous plastic surgeon. She asked him to operate, just to “tune” her nose, but to leave the characteristic “bulge” it had on the septum. The procedure was a success and Gray started getting more documents and earning more money.
What a director saw
The famous lifting scene in “Dirty Dancing”, starring Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze.
In 1992, while filming Windthe film’s cinematographer noticed a piece of cartilage protruding from the tip of his nose.
The actress talked to her surgeon and agreed to fix it. The idea was simply not to see that piece of cartilage, but the result of that second operation would change his life.
When he was able to remove the bandages, Gray was surprised at what the mirror showed him. “I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I knew something bad had happened“.
Other passages: a key scene from “Dirty Dancing”, with Jennifer Gray and Patrick Swayze.
That second operation changed its appearance so much that the general public no longer recognized it. “He seemed to have committed an unforgivable crime: Deliberately taking off the one thing that made me special, “says Gray, aware that his original nose was also a physical connection to his Jewish identity.
In an interview with reporter Katie Couric last May, Gray reflected on what had happened.
As he said, his parents’ families were Jews from Eastern Europe and when they arrived in the United States they changed their surname. And for Jews who worked in show business (his father is actor Joel Gray, Oscar winner for Cabaret), changing the nose “was normal and considered intelligent”.
“My mother knew how the show worked and he thought it would be easier for me to get the documentsyes, because there weren’t many roles for girls who looked like me and were Jewish. There weren’t many opportunities and she wanted me to have more. She wanted me to have the career she didn’t have. “
Jennifer Gray after surgery to correct her septum.
aesthetic changes
“I don’t know what it did, but it changed the proportion of my face (…) it looked different in a way that didn’t make sense,” Jennifer Gray said in an interview with Katie Couric.
“Was the most difficult, lonely and confused time of my life. It was very devastating. And being so misunderstood all over the world for decades … The lack of generosity and humanity hurt me so much. “
According to Gray, after the operation he “couldn’t find a job” or survive. “I’ve decided to throw in the towel. I’ve never again asked anyone to approve of her or like me.”
Life after the dirty dance
Dirty dance. a classic from the 80s.
From then on, he had to figure out who he was “without that character, without Dirty Dancing”. “Y in that solitude I hit rock bottom. And I understood who I was and what I was worth in a way that no one would ever be able to take away from me “.
The actress, who is now working on the production of a sequel Dirty dance– spent years trying to understand why the audience turned their backs on him after his change of appearance.
“At one point I thought maybe they felt it [el personaje] Baby it was them and they felt very identified with her, because there are very few films in which the protagonist looks like them, or is not perfect or is more human … and it hurt them that (with the operation) she was saying something on them, which were not enough “.
“I spent too many years thinking about it and not finding an answer. I just realized that no one was going to save me (…) It was a drama and I realized that I am a very strong person,” said Gray.
“All the difficult things that have happened to me, have happened to me and have changed me and I don’t want to be someone else (…) Now I am happier than ever and I am very grateful that I survived. And I don’t think about myself or my nose. I think about how much I have contributed in this life, as a mother, as a friend,… ”.
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Source: Clarin
