The first thing people ask actress Jennifer Grey is whether a sequel to her hit movie, ”Dirty Dancing,” is in the works.
No, she says: ”Unless it`s as good as or better than the first one, I`m not interested in ripping people off just to make that box office.”
In fact, she adds, ”I don`t know how it could be as good as or better because it`s about a loss of innocence. And that only happens once.”
Five years ago, at 27, this third-generation entertainer became the screen darling of the summer of `87 as ”Baby” Houseman, a `60s teenager making the transition from adolescence to womanhood.
That film also marked a change for Grey, from little-known performer to film star, with all of the attendant publicity baggage. But then she more of less dropped out, or appeared to. Now, five summers later, she`s back as the female lead in another cinematic romance, ”Wind.”
With her history it was just a matter of time before she would return to the spotlight. Grey`s family represents the melting pot`s evolution, from Yiddish humor to Broadway to the MTV generation. Her grandfather, the late Mickey Katz, was a borscht belt singer-comedian whose string of song spoofs still exists in basements and attics on 78 r.p.m. and long-playing records. Her father, Tony and Oscar winner Joel Grey, has been a strong presence in musical theater and the concert circuit, and occasionally on film, for 30 years.
”I grew up with `The Boyfriend` and `Stop the World I Want To Get Off`
and `Cabaret,` ” Jennifer says. ”My mom (Jo Wilder) was an actress too, until I was 2 1/2. I was always on the road, always in hotels, always backstage. I was always having wigs stuck on my head as a kid, when I was hanging out with all the dancers in the gypsies` (ensemble) dressing room. They loved to put makeup and costumes on me and teach me dance steps. That was my idea of heaven-it still is.”
She was 6 in 1966, when her father first sang ”Wilkommen” to open
”Cabaret.” She spent her weekends backstage and summers often on the stock theater circuit, following her dad around.
”That was how I grew up,” she says, ”and it never occurred to me to do anything else. It was just a matter of how long my parents could hold me back before I got started.”
They held her back for quite a while. With the exception of an occasional stage walk-on during curtain calls as a treat, Joel and Jo kept Jennifer under wraps.
”My dad was 11 when he started as a child actor,” she says. ”I think he realized the price you have to pay, and the price you pay about knowing yourself. They were very wonderful parents in that they wanted me to get a sense of myself-who I am-and not to have that dictated to me by my parts, or the audience, or the reviews. . . . They wanted me to have a great education- and to stay in school.”
Shifting between coasts, subject to the vagaries of her father`s career, Jennifer supplemented her public and private school days with various arts classes.
”My parents really stressed the piano and ballet,” she recalls. Dance gave her an outlet for her energy and talent.
”The focus for me-I had to let it out somehow-was with ballet, jazz classes, Afro-ethnic classes, tap, piano and singing lessons,” she says.
”But I wasn`t allowed to audition, which is what I`d wanted to do since I was a kid.”
After graduating from New York`s Dalton School, a private school, she attended the Neighborhood Playhouse (her parents` alma mater) for two years as a full-time student. Joel and Jo had wanted her to go to college, but Jennifer recalls being ”very headstrong about what I wanted-and I was in a big hurry.”
Finally, at 19, she began going out on auditions. Hired as the understudy for two actresses in an off-Broadway play, ”Album,” she performed well enough in periodic appearances to be given one of the roles in the play`s six- month run at the Apollo Theater Center in Chicago. Then she did some television commercials, along with a series of small parts in such movies as
”The Cotton Club” (as Nicholas Cage`s wife) and ”Ferris Bueller`s Day Off” (as Ferris` conniving younger sister).
Then she was cast in ”Dirty Dancing” as Baby, the impressionable girl who falls madly in love with a streetwise dance instructor played by Patrick Swayze at a Catskills, N.Y., resort.
Making that film would have provided a blissful summer for Grey, involved as she was in her own relationship at the time with actor Matthew Broderick
(the two later were engaged, then broke up), had it not been for an unforeseen tragedy that occurred two weeks before the movie`s release. While they were touring Ireland, their rental car collided with another auto. Both women in the second car were killed, and Broderick was hospitalized with a broken leg. He pleaded guilty to a charge of careless driving and was fined $175.
Although her injuries were minor, Grey says the accident and attendant tabloid attention were traumatic for her.
”It gave me an appreciation for the fragility of life,” she says.
”There are lots of tragedies people go through. And every time you`re changed. The quality of life is different. Everything is touched.
”I think about that accident, and about the women who died, all the time. They`re with me. The truth is, all you can do is drive as safely as you can. Wear a seatbelt. Every day I realize it can be over that fast (she snaps her fingers), and that if I don`t live life now, I may not have it tomorrow. That`s the most important lesson-if I can live in the moment as fully as possible, and not bemoan the past or worry about the future.
Her new film, ”Wind,” is her most visible project since her performance two years ago as the wife of slain civil rights activist Michael Schwerner in the television movie ”Murder in Mississippi.” But what some would perceive as a dry spell she sees as a ”perfect” time, a period of growth and simply living.
”I`m one of the busiest people I know,” she says. ”My days are filled. I do lots of things I don`t like to talk about in interviews because it`s my personal life. I have a garden. I work with a woman who teaches me how to garden.
”I`m really a homemaker. I like taking care of my peekapoo (a mix of Pekingese and poodle), and that quiet, private part of my life. I take an acting class I`m crazy about, and dance classes three or four times a week that I wouldn`t miss for anything. I don`t dance in preparation for a job-I do it for myself, to work out, to stay in shape, to have fun, to get high. It`s a great outlet for my energy.”
She would like to be married and a mother one day. Meanwhile, she`s a perennial volunteer for a variety of causes, ”depending on what`s going on.” Since the Los Angeles riots she has spent time making sandwiches at a church in Westwood for distribution to people in South Central.
”There are always people in need or in trouble-homebound people with AIDS, for instance. We all have so much-if we can only give a little bit. There`s voter registration. There`s pro-choice. There`s a lot going on in the world.”
Within that framework, where does her professional work fit?
”It`s right up there with everything else. But it`s not more important than my own development of my own private life-it`s equally important. … I like supporting myself as an actor, but sometimes I`m very frustrated with the quality of work out there to be gotten.
”I know I need to make a living, and sometimes I feel like I need more money than at other times. Sometimes, depending on my life`s demands, I will take a job for money, or location, and then hate it and say `never for money again.` But for me, there`s always something to be gotten-whether it`s money, or going to a beautiful place, or working with an interesting person, or feeling like it`s meant for me, kind of has my name on it-and the lessons I need to learn.”
She got that chance with ”Wind,” working with director Carroll Ballard, who had directed ”The Black Stallion.” Ballard is ”a real craftsman, not in a hurry to slap something together,” Grey says. Set against the backdrop of the America`s Cup, it features Grey as Kate Bass, an aeronautical engineer and part-time yachtswoman coping with priorities, goals and commitments.
For Grey, who had not sailed before, the five-month shoot at sea off Australia and Hawaii was ”a shocking experience.” And working with Ballard was ”like Outward Bound: life-changing.
”You have to forget about your agenda, your schedule, about where you have to be or where your career should be going,” she says. ”It`s nothing to do with any of those things. It`s just about doing the work at hand and focusing on it until it`s done right.”
These days, she says, there is no work at hand. Waiting for the next chance, she`s fairly stoical about her career thus far.
”I really believe that we all get the parts we`re supposed to get, and have the grace period we`re supposed to get, and then the difficult struggle,” she says.
”All that stuff is in perfect order if you just accept it. That`s what keeps you creative. That`s what stirs you up. Because it`s not about an easy ride. For me, I try not to have too many expectations. Expectations lead to disappointments.
”I want to live as full a life as possible, and if it means acting once a year, I don`t care. I just want to see what`s in store for me, and do the best I can with it, and try, somehow, to be of service in this world.”
Grey has made a resolution to exclude gossip from her life. The reason, she says, is that ”It`s character assassination to talk about somebody else behind their back. . . . People are going to have to get back to being human- to treating others like brothers and sisters. I`ve got to start with me and if I can try, every day, to not gossip about somebody else, then that`s my way of being loving. It`s really hard work. It sounds corny. But I really think that`s the answer.”
Grey remains close to her parents, who divorced 10 years ago.
Her father says of her: ”She has a great capacity for life as an art.”
He advises his daughter now, he says, only when she asks. As she became an adult, he says, ”I really thought she knew what I thought, and it was more valuable for her to discover the way to live in this business.”
Of the few major roles she has had since ”Dirty Dancing,” he says,
”When you make a hit in a very powerful way, it takes a long time until you redefine yourself, and I think the character of Baby was really specific. As a result I think people, especially in the business, think of you as that
`thing` that made all that money. I think that`s probably what happened, plus (Jennifer) had other things that were important in her life that she was tending to. She`s really interested-serious and eager.”
Fame, fortune, glamor?
”I was raised in it,” Jennifer Grey says. ”So it`s not like I`m a kid from Kansas who all of a sudden became famous. I know not to take it too seriously. I never had to have that dream burst for me, although once in a while I have to remind myself that being famous or rich or successful is not the goal.
”We all forget-we live in a society where we`re fed it, morning, noon and night. The truth is, especially if you`ve been there, or next to it, that it doesn`t fix your life, it doesn`t change your life and it doesn`t make you happy. Period.”
