Nobody puts Jennifer Grey in the corner – and the Dirty Dancing actress made sure to stand out as she appeared on Good Morning America on November, 1 2024.
The 64-year-old actress – who famously changed her appearance in the 1980s after the release of Dirty Dancing – wowed in an abstract black floral short-sleeve dress by Prabul Gurung, wearing her hair loose in waves around her shoulders.
Alongside Jesse Eisenberg, her co-star in her new film A Real Pain, Jennifer appeared on the morning show, as well as visiting SiriusXM.
The film follows mismatched cousins David and Benji (played by Jesse and Kieran Culkin) as they tour Poland with a group, including Jennifer's Marcia, to honor their late grandmother. However, old tensions surface as they explore their family's history.
Jennifer has spoken publicly about how her decision to have a nose job to look "less Jewish" and more suitable for roles, ended up leaving her without work because she no longer looked like herself.
"When my parents and their parents fled Ukraine and came to this country, everybody was trying to look American," said Jennifer; her parents are of Jewish-descent.
"It was standard to change your last name, and to change your nose so you could be an actor…or just be considered pretty. There was a lot of self-loathing attached to our natural noses."
For many years, the public perception was that she had chosen to have surgery because she hated the way she looked which, as she wrote in her memoir, Out Of The Corner, was "not only completely inaccurate, but it was also really hurtful and offensive to me".
"It mischaracterized me and my journey. I loved what I looked like [before]. I didn’t think I was perfect. I struggled [with my appearance] the way most people do, especially if you don’t look like the prettiest girl in the class," she wrote.
"But I think even those girls struggle because self-criticism is a cultural epidemic."
Dirty Dancing was released almost 40 years ago, and in 2023 Jennifer teased a possible sequel.
"Right now, we’re getting as close as we’ve ever been to – I think it is happening this year, the sequel for Dirty Dancing,” she said on Good Morning America.
Jennifer will not only reprise her role as Baby but also take on the role of executive producer, and will also reportedly shift the setting from the 1960s to the 1990s although it will still take place at the picturesque Kellerman’s Mountain House in the Catskills, New York.
The film followed 18-year-old Frances "Baby" Houseman, a young woman who falls in love with dance instructor Johnny Castle (the late Patrick Swayze the boy from the wrong side of town, while staying at an upscale vacation resort with her father, a doctor, stay-at-home mom and older sister.