Jennifer Grey (born March 26, 1960) is an American actress. She is known for her roles in the 1980s films Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987), for which Grey earned a Golden Globe Award nomination. She is also known for her 2010 victory in season eleven of the American version of Dancing with the Stars. Grey is the daughter of Academy Award–winning actor Joel Grey and former actress/singer Jo Wilder. Grey currently stars in the Amazon Studios comedy series Red Oaks.

Biography

On August 5, 1987, Grey suffered severe whiplash in a car accident in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, while vacationing with Matthew Broderick, whom she began dating in semi-secrecy during the filming of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The accident, which was the event through which their relationship became public, occurred when Broderick, at the wheel of a rented BMW, crossed into the wrong lane and collided head-on with a Volvo driven by a local mother and daughter, Margaret Doherty, 63, and Anna Gallagher, 28, who were killed instantly in the accident. Broderick was later convicted of careless driving and fined $175. Dirty Dancing was released a few weeks after the accident, catapulting Grey to fame, but she has said that her grief and survivor's guilt over the crash prevented her from enjoying the film's success, and led her to withdraw from acting for some time.

Grey was also romantically involved with actor Johnny Depp and journalist George Stephanopoulos. She married actor/director Clark Gregg on July 21, 2001. They have a daughter Stella, born December 3, 2001. They live in Venice, California. The couple co-starred in the Lifetime movie The Road to Christmas in 2006.

Prior to her 2010 appearances on Dancing with the Stars, Grey had a physical examination to ensure that she was fit enough to compete and saw a doctor to address chronic neck problems caused by the car accident years before. Her spinal cord was compressed and her surgeon placed a titanium plate in her neck to stabilize it. He also found a suspicious white spot on her thyroid via MRI. The nodule was cancerous and was removed. Grey has stated she believes the cancer was caught before it metastasized and that she is now cancer-free. Grey did not want to rehearse the lift scene for Dirty Dancing because she was too scared. She did the lift for the first time in the final scene of the movie.

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