From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
The Dirty Dancing star is back from a disappointing dead end

SHE SITS AT AN AFTERNOON LUNCH AT PATRICK'S ROADHOUSE IN Santa Monica, picking at a banana cream pie and expounding passionately on such subjects as AIDS and Democratic politics. "The one thing we have left is the vote. Hey, it's the cheapest high in town!" says Jennifer Grey, 32. In person the feisty actress who pachanga-ed her way into Patrick Swayze's heart in 1987's Dirty Dancing bears surprisingly small resemblance to that movie's timid ingenue, Baby. "I've always been a defiant little animal," she says, "always very much my own person."

A good thing too. For Grey, the daughter of Oscar-winning song-and-dance man Joel (Cabaret) and the onetime love of actor Matthew Broderick, life since her Dancing days has been one big mettle detector. She has survived a deadly car crash and the breakup of relationships with Broderick and with actor Johnny Depp—and spent long stretches waiting in vain for plum parts. Now, at last, she's back—looking subtly different—in a romantic adventure movie, Wind, costarring Matthew Modine. "This was the kind of movie I want to be in," she says of the project, which took half a year to complete. "A six-month commitment is enough to scare anybody," she adds, laughing. "That's longer than I've been with most guys!"

Grey's problems started the same month that Dirty Dancing opened. She and Broderick, on vacation in Northern Ireland, were in a head-on collision on a country road. Both passengers in the other car—a mother and daughter—were killed, and Broderick suffered a broken leg. Grey, who miraculously escaped injury, canceled her Dancing publicity appearances to help him recuperate. "It's very hard to balance being there for somebody else and taking care of yourself," she says today. "I think the accident had a big effect on the course of events." While her costar Swayze catapulted to major stardom, she has been more or less absent from the big screen for the past five years, although she did appear in such TV movies as NBC's Murder in Mississippi in 1990. "I thought all the great roles would pour in. And it never happened," she says. "I had this feeling that I wasn't supposed to have that kind of life or career at that time."

When it came to what kind of looks she would have, though, Grey took a more aggressive stance. Toward the end of the Wind shoot, she went on hiatus and came back with a new nose. Why did she decide on plastic surgery? "No comment," she says firmly. Modine, for one, is baffled by her decision. "I don't know why she did it," he says. "I thought she was really beautiful before."

So, apparently, did quite a few others. Grey has rarely wanted for boyfriends. She was engaged to Depp for nine months in 1990. Although she will say almost nothing about her love life these days, she has been romantically linked with actor Liam Neeson (Husbands and Wives). "I think relationships are really hard," she says. "Each one gives you lessons that you need."

Grey got most of her early lessons in life from her showbiz family. The granddaughter of Borscht Belt comedian Mickey Katz—her mother is former Broadway actress Jo Silver—she spent her childhood shuttling between Manhattan and L.A. For as long as she can remember, she dreamed of being an actress but was forbidden to do so by her father until she left home. "I thought she needed to be more grown up to deal with the complexities of this business," he explains. Jennifer still goes into a tailspin, she admits, when she loses a good part. "You need the skin of a rhinoceros not to be devastated," she says. Yet she has learned to count her blessings. "I say, 'Whooo, what really matters?' I'm healthy. I have a beautiful family, friends, dog and home."

Grey recently made a psychological break with New York City, giving up her Manhattan apartment and making Los Angeles her home base. Now one thing she really looks forward to, she says, is children. "I hope that I'll be able to have kids with a mate," she says. "But I don't know if that's in the plan. Someone once told me, 'How do you give God a good laugh? Tell him your plans.' "

MARJORIE ROSEN
KRISTINA JOHNSON in Los Angeles