Jennifer Grey

Jennifer Grey Speaker Biography

Prolific actress Jennifer Grey gained worldwide recognition back in 1986 for her role as Jeanie Bueller in the smash-hit teen comedy, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The following year she then earned critical acclaim for her part in the romantic drama, Dirty Dancing, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. Since then she has continued to act in film and TV, and even won season eleven of the reality TV show, Dancing with the Stars, in 2010.

Grey is the daughter of Oscar-winning actor Joel Grey and granddaughter of comedian and musician Mickey Katz. She was raised in Manhattan and studied dance and acting at the city’s Dalton School. After graduating, she enrolled in Manhattan’s Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. She supported herself by working as a waitress. Her commercial debut was for a Dr Pepper ad when she was 19, and soon after she made her film debut in Reckless, opposite Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah. She has since gone on to act with many huge Hollywood stars, including Patrick Swayze, Richard Gere, Shirley MacLaine, Liza Minnelli and Katy Bates, and for big-name director’s such as Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and John Hughes. She has also appeared in numerous TV shows, including Grey’s Anatomy, Strictly Come Dancing and House. She famously had “a nose job from hell” which briefly threatened her career, but she continued to act and even made a running joke of her operation in the sitcom, It’s Like, You Know… in which she played herself.

Today Grey lives in Los Angeles and is currently teaming up with Lionsgate on the long- awaited sequel of Dirty Dancing , which she will star in and executive produce.