The actress who played “Baby” in the beloved movie Dirty Dancing, Jennifer Grey, was expected to see a significant boost in her career possibilities.
That was not to be, though. Instead, a terrible accident changed everything and forced her to give up the movie industry forever.
The terrible period in her life that left Jennifer Grey severely traumatized was finally discussed by the sixty-two-year-old Jennifer Grey after many years.
It’s a low-budget movie without a big name director or celebrity cast.
But when Dirty Dancing opened in theaters in August 1987, the actors and producers realized they had accomplished something truly great.
The primary actor, Patrick Swayze, achieved quick success. He became well-known as a sex icon and teenage hero before going on to appear in big-budget films like Donnie Darko and Ghost.
But when the movie first came out, his co-star Jennifer Grey wasn’t feeling well, so she swiftly disappeared from sight. Jennifer Grey disappeared amidst the chaos and celebrations just as quickly as she had appeared.
In addition, the actress spent a considerable amount of time away from the spotlight.
Nonetheless, in a recent interview with People Magazine, she revealed every detail of the accident that changed her life.
First, let’s take a look at Jennifer Grey’s life leading up to the tragic event that happened in the summer of 1987.
Jennifer Gray began taking dancing classes at a young age. Her father most likely urged her to seek a career in entertainment when she was born in New York in 1960. Her father, Joel Gray, was an actor, director, photographer, dancer, and vocalist.
Jennifer attended the Dalton School to study dancing and acting. After graduation in 1978, she began seeking acting roles, and she went on to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. But it wasn’t a rose-colored dance in her life. Jennifer had to work as a waitress to pay the bills.
She did, however, manage to get a couple of TV commercials, including one for Dr. Pepper. Her first motion picture role was in 1984’s “Reckless.” A few years later, she had an incredible breakout role in “Dirty Dancing,” where she played Frances “Baby” Houseman.
The cherished film’s narrative is based on scriptwriter Eleanor Bergstein’s early years. Jennifer became well-known overnight and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.
Sad event
Unfortunately, she was never able to enjoy the enormous success.
Just before the movie’s August 1987 premiere, Grey and her then-boyfriend Matthew Broderick were residing in Ireland.
But Broderick was driving on the wrong side of the road when he struck another car, and the pair was involved in a horrifying auto accident. A woman and her daughter were killed instantly when they were in the other car.
Eventually, Broderick’s charges of careless driving were withdrawn. In contrast, Jennifer Grey only suffered minor bumps and bruises, but her psychological scars remained.
A few days later, Dirty Dancing had its premiere. Nevertheless, Grey was unable to enjoy the success of the film.
In the middle of such severe sadness and survivor’s guilt, it just didn’t feel right to be heralded as the next big thing. “It didn’t feel good to be the toast of the town,” Grey reportedly said, according to the Daily Mirror.
The actress’s anguish from the accident will never fully go away.
“My ambition and my head were never the same,” she told People.
The most awful nose job ever
Her struggle with survivor’s guilt caused her to disappear for a while in the early 1990s, but she reappeared in a single Friends episode in 1995.
By then, she had undergone plastic surgery, and her face was radically altered.
“I entered the operating room as a celebrity and left anonymous,” she said in 2012.
It was like being undercover or covered by witness protection. The worst nose job I’ve ever seen. I’ll always be this once-famous actress that nobody knows about because of a nose job.
Jennifer’s Hollywood career was sporadic after that.
By 2010, Jennifer had made a successful comeback to the mainstream media. She was a hit with the public once more after winning “Dancing with the Stars.” She said that was something that was important to her.
I feel like I’ve starved myself out of concern for what people may think of me. “This is like having a delicious steak after 23 years on a diet,” the actor said to People.
In 2018, Grey took another step toward the limelight she had previously left behind. She is expected to star in the upcoming motion picture Untogether and comedy Red Oaks.
Jennifer, we’re so happy to see you back to your passionate, happy self!
Who else has a strong need to go back in time to 1987 at this point? Watch the classic scene from Dirty Dancing down below. What beautiful memories!
Please share this news with your friends on Facebook. Like me, they probably watched Dirty Dancing and wondered what happened to the gorgeous Jennifer Grey!
Dan Haggerty, Who Played Grizzly Adams
In the 1974 film “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams” and the NBC television series of the same name, Dan Haggerty portrayed a kind mountain man with a lush beard and a bear named Ben. Haggerty passed away on Friday in Burbank, California.
He was seventy-three.
According to his buddy and manager Terry Bomar, the cause was spine cancer.
Mr. Haggerty was employed in Hollywood as an animal trainer and stuntman when a producer asked him to reprise portions of the film’s opening sequences, which were about a woodsman and his bear.
Based on Charles Sellier Jr.’s novel “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” it narrated the tale of a man from California who runs away from the woods after being wrongfully convicted of murder. There, he befriends the local wildlife and tames an abandoned bear.
Mr. Haggerty consented, provided that he may do the full film. After being remade for $165,000, the movie finally brought in close to $30 million from ticket sales. After that, it was made into a television series, and in February 1977, Mr. Haggerty returned to his environmentally conscious duty as the forest’s defender and animal buddy.
John Leonard described the first episode in The New York Times as “lukewarm to the heart.” Mad Jack (Denver Pyle) and the honorable red man Makuma (Don Shanks) bring bread and advise to the man and bear who have taken up residence in a log cabin. Bear washes his fur while the man traps his as they depart the cabin. There’s also a lot of connecting with nature, raccoons, owls, deer, bunnies, hawks, badgers, cougars, and a lump in the throat.
Warm and nostalgic, the show won over fans to Mr. Haggerty, who went on to win the 1978 People’s Choice Award for best new series actor. “Grizzly Adams” gave rise to two sequels: “Legend of the Wild,” which aired in 1978 and was eventually released in theaters in 1981; and “The Capture of Grizzly Adams,” which aired as a TV movie in 1982 and saw Adams being brought back to his hometown by bounty hunters in order to clear his record.
On November 19, 1942, Daniel Francis Haggerty was born in Los Angeles. After his parents divorced when he was three years old, he had a difficult upbringing and repeatedly escaped from military school. Eventually, he moved in with his actor father in Burbank, California.
He wed Diane Rooker at the age of 17. The union broke down in divorce. In 2008, he lost his second wife, Samantha Hilton, in a motorbike accident. His children, Don, Megan, Tracy, Dylan, and Cody, survive him.
In his debut movie, “Muscle Beach Party” (1964), he starred with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as physique builder Biff. Then came came cameos in nature and motorcycle movies, such as “Biker With Bandana” and “Bearded Biker.” In “Easy Rider,” he made a fleeting appearance as a visitor to the hippie commune visited by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.
In reality, Mr. Haggerty kept a variety of wild animals that he had either tamed from birth or rescued from harm on his tiny ranch in Malibu Canyon. His abilities brought him work as a stuntman and animal trainer on the television shows “Daktari” and “Tarzan,” in addition to sporadic roles in movies. “People magazine didn’t like actors jumping on them,” he said in 1978.
He acted as a Siberian tiger trapper in “Where the North Wind Blows” (1974), one of his outdoor-themed flicks, and in “The Adventures of Frontier Fremont” (1976). In the David Carradine movie “Americana,” he had an appearance as a dog trainer (1983). He portrayed a figure who was strikingly similar to Grizzly Adams in the movies “Grizzly Mountain” (1997) and “Escape to Grizzly Mountain” (2000).
As his career faded, Mr. Haggerty starred in horror movies such as “Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan” (2013), “Terror Night” (1987), and “Elves” (1989), in which he played an inebriated mall Santa. He was given a 90-day jail sentence in 1985 for supplying cocaine to two police agents who were undercover.
A negligent diner carrying a flaming cocktail ignited Mr. Haggerty’s well-known beard in 1977. He attempted to put out the fire, but instead burned his arms in the third degree. He was sent to a hospital where he would have therapy that would likely take a month.
“For the first few days, I was like a wounded wolf trying to heal myself—I just laid in the dark room drinking water,” he said to People. “Nurses urged me to open the curtains and attempted to give me morphine.” But occasionally, animals have better medical knowledge than humans. After ten days, he left the hospital on foot.
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