At only 27 years old she reached the peak of her popularity, but after having surgery on her nose her fame faded.
The story of actress Jennifer Gray is that of many other celebrities who went from being a Hollywood promise to disappearing from the film industry. But in the case of the “Dirty Dancing” star, it was all due to rhinoplasty.
At only 27 years old, the young actress reached the peak of her popularity with the 1987 film, in which she played Baby, the young woman who in the arms of Patrick Swayze discovers dance, love and passion on a summer vacation.
Although Gray had debuted at just 19 years old in an advertisement for the Dr Pepper soft drink, over the next decade she had only achieved a few supporting roles. Apparently, her prominent nose did not conform to the prevailing canons of beauty and she was rejected in all the castings she attended.
Among those first titles are “Reckless”, “The Cotton Club” and “Red Dawn”, all three released in 1984 and the last one with Swayze himself. And “Ferris Bueller's Day Off,” a 1986 film in which she met Matthew Broderick, an actor with whom she began dating secretly.
Just before the premiere of “Dirty Dancing,” Gray and Broderick were involved in a car accident while on vacation in Ireland. The interpreter, who was driving, occupied the opposite lane, colliding head-on with another vehicle in which a mother and daughter were traveling, who died. The actor was convicted of reckless driving and fined $175.
Gray assured People magazine that she was never the same after that incident: “The impact was emotional and physical. My body was never the same, my head was never the same, my ambition was never the same.”
In the actress's opinion, this lack of ambition was the reason why she decided to undergo rhinoplasty shortly afterwards. Gray decided to modify the nose that may have prevented her from achieving fame before, but which had then become her distinctive feature.
Her first surgery took place in 1989 and shortly after she had to undergo a second rhinoplasty to correct the problems caused by the first one. Grey's image change was so radical that not even her acquaintances recognized her, reports El Mundo.
“I went into the operating room being a celebrity and came out anonymous. It was like entering a witness protection program or being invisible,” said the actress after the disastrous result. Well, Ella Gray acknowledged that she hoped to change her appearance, but not to the point that it would destroy her career because no one recognized the girl from “Dirty Dancing” anymore.
Since then, Ella Gray has continued working as an actress, but she has only gotten a few supporting or episodic roles in series like “Friends,” “House” or “Grey’s Anatomy.” Between 1999 and 2000 she starred in the series "It's Like, You Know...", a short-lived comedy where her rhinoplasty was a recurring gag. And in 2010 she won “Dancing with the Stars,” an American dance reality television show that premiered on June 1, 2005 on ABC.
