“From Ballet Dreams to Hollywood Shock: The Untold Ups and Downs of Jennifer Grey’s Iconic Journey”
Jennifer Grey was born to dance
Credit: @jennifergrey Instagram
Born and raised in New York City into a creative Jewish family – as well as having an Oscar-winning father, her mother was the American actress and singer Jo Wilder (born 1938), while her paternal grandfather was musician and comedian Mickey Katz (born 1909) – Jennifer Grey was almost inevitably set for a career in the arts.
With her father also a trained dancer, Jennifer Grey studied dance as a child in New York. Training as an actress followed, at the Dalton School in Manhattan. After graduating from Dalton in 1978, Grey continued her acting training at Manhattan’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, whilst also working as a waitress to support herself.
Though she would graduate from the Neighbourhood Playhouse in 1980, Grey got her first acting job before she even finished her studies: a cameo in Dr Pepper’s 1979 I’m a Pepper commercial. She then bagged her debut film role at the young age of 23 in 1984 romantic drama Reckless.
Her early Reckless role was small, but she would graduate to progressively larger roles in other 1984 films The Cotton Club and, what most would see as her initial career-making film appearance, as Toni in dystopian teen hit Red Dawn.
In the latter, she starred alongside Patrick Swayze for the first time, where the pair apparently clashed – and not for the last time. Grey and Swayze had a fraught relationship, and in their next film together, Dirty Dancing, either could storm off set at any moment due to their clashing personalities. They may have enjoyed a great movie romance, but in reality there was no love lost between Swayze and Grey.
