Poor Baby, Jennifer 'WHY I WAS PUT IN THE CORNER'

Rather than having the time of her life, the star tells how her career nose-dived

Ever since Jennifer Grey charmed the world with her performance in Dirty Dancing, she has been inextricably linked to the quote, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner" and now, 35 years later, the actress is finally taking herself out of that corner!

In her new memoir, released this month, Jennifer is lifting the lid on everything from her cocaine-dusted teen years to her adult love life.

In Friends

But one of the most startling revelations is how a nose job in the '80s strangled her promising career when it had only just begun.

"After Dirty Dancing, I was America's sweetheart, which you would think would be the key to unlocking all of my hopes and dreams," shares Jennifer, 62. "But it didn't go down that way."

With Derek Hough on DWTS

Instead, following advice from her mother that she would get more movie parts if she fine-tuned her nose, Jennifer underwent two rhinoplasty surgeries.

The second procedure was catastrophic, leaving her proboscis "dwarfed”, and it spelled disaster for her career she says few people recognized anymore.

On Grey's Anatomy.

For example, Michael Douglas didn't know who she was when they met on the red carpet of a movie premiere.

And an airline employee looked at her driver's licence and said, 'Oh, Jennifer Grey, like the actress.” When Jennifer replied, “Actually, it is me," the woman retorted, "I've seen Dirty Dancing a dozen times. I know Jennifer Grey and you are not her."

“Overnight," laments the star, “I lost my identity and my career. I felt invisible. I went into the operating room a celebrity and came out anonymous.”