Jennifer Grey poses during a media event.

Celebrity

Jennifer Grey Net Worth

Jennifer Grey exploded onto the entertainment scene after starring in Dirty Dancing. Here's a look at the star's net worth and her acting career.

by Sheiresa Ngo

Published on July 19, 2022

2 min read

Jennifer Grey’s acting career

Jennifer Grey | Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

One of Grey’s first acting roles was in the 1984 film Reckless, in which she played the character Cathy Bennario. That same year, Grey appeared in Red Dawn alongside Patrick Swayze.

Grey became a household name after starring in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off in 1986 alongside ex-fiancé Matthew Broderick. After appearing in an episode of The Equalizer, she starred in her next big film, Dirty Dancing. This film reunited her with Swayze and turned out to be her biggest hit.

Some of Grey’s other acting roles include appearances in Bloodhounds of Broadway, Murder in Mississippi, Friends, Bounce, Phineas and Ferb, Red Oak, and Grey’s Anatomy.

Jennifer Grey says the filming of ‘Dirty Dancing’ was ‘cursed’

Grey says a lot went wrong while she was working on the Dirty Dancing set. In her autobiography Out of the Corner, she says her time filming the movie was “extremely chaotic” and “cursed.” (Things weren’t going well even before filming. Grey says her boyfriend at the time, Matthew Broderick, told her she wasn’t going to get the role of Baby.)

Dirty Dancing was filmed at two active resorts (one located in North Carolina and one in Virginia). However, one complication was that the crew couldn’t film until the guests and campers left. As a result, there was no choice but to film the movie’s summer scenes in the fall. Grey says the leaves were beginning to change to fall colors, so the art department had to spray paint the leaves green.

Grey also says there was frequent rainfall, and mosquitos appeared after the rain stopped. She describes herself as a “mosquito magnet,” so the makeup artist had to apply makeup on her in between takes so the mosquito bites could be camouflaged.

Grey also says Dirty Dancing was “an extremely low-budget production,” so she was concerned the movie wouldn’t look high-quality. While the budget was $4.5 million, she says the film was produced by a home video company named Vestron, and they had never made a movie before.

Grey also says the script was in rough shape. According to her, the dialogue didn’t flow naturally, so she had to find ways to make the conversations work. Grey says Swayze initially didn’t want to say the famous line, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

Grey initially didn’t want Swayze to play the role of Johnny Castle. She worked with him on the 1984 film Red Dawn, and she didn’t have a positive experience. According to Grey, Swayze played too many practical jokes. She didn’t believe he took his work seriously, so she was hesitant about him joining the Dirty Dancing cast.