ABC DWTS mirrorball trophy
A “Dancing with the Stars” champion sparked a big reaction when she posted photos of her new look.
In 2010, Jennifer Grey made history as the oldest female celebrity to win the “Dancing With the Stars” competition. She was 50 years old at the time and suffering from a ruptured disc in her lower back as she danced her final routine with partner Derek Hough for the mirrorball trophy, per ABC News.
Fast forward a dozen years, and Grey looks very different.
Here’s what you need to know:
Jennifer Grey Stunned Fans in Photos Posted in November 2022
Longtime fans remember Jennifer Grey from the movie “Dirty Dancing,” where she had curly, shoulder-length hair and a unique nose. By the time she joined DWTS, she’d had multiple nose jobs, so she did look different than fans remembered her.
But in photos posted on Instagram in November 2022, any trace of the OG Grey was gone. In the pics shared to her social media page, the actress donned heavily teased, bleached blonde hair and heavy eye makeup – for a movie role.
Grey captioned the pic to tell fans to call her “Gwen.” The 62-year-old actress shared another photo from the movie shoot and told fans, “Up to no good in Montreal.”
Fans reacted to Grey’s wild look in the comment section.
“Incredible transformation. Wow,” wrote pro dancer Benji Schwimmer.
“Unrecognizable,” another follower added. “That cant be you,” another wrote to Grey. “Holy transformation I didn’t even recognize you,” another chimed in.
According to Deadline, Grey was made up to play cult leader Gwen Shamblin in an upcoming Lifetime movie titled “Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation.”
Shamblin was the founder of the controversial Remnant Fellowship Church, which promoted a Christian-based Weigh Down Workshop diet program, per The Daily Beast. She died in 2021.
In her photos, Grey nailed the look of the controversial cult leader, although her hair could have been even “crazier,” some commenters noted.
This Is Not the First Time Jennifer Grey Was Unrecognizable
YouTube/MovieclipsJennifer Grey in “Dirty Dancing.”
Grey knows a thing or two about being unrecognizable. In the 1990s, she underwent two rhinoplasty surgeries that changed her face so much fans didn’t know who she was.
In an interview with The New York Times, Grey revealed that the change was so drastic that it impacted her ability to get acting jobs. “Overnight I lose my identity and my career,” she said.
In 1999, she decided to poke fun at her “unrecognizable” persona on the sitcom “It’s Like….You Know.” Grey played herself on the comedy series, but the running joke was that no one recognized her from her “Dirty Dancing” heyday.
“I decided to make fun of this, to make my fiasco become my reality,” she told The Washington Post at the time. “After all, it’s not cancer, and it’s absurd that just a nose job could wreak such havoc.”
Grey also lost her signature hair look. In 2022, she told E! News that she experienced hair thinning during the COVID pandemic. ‘I always had the greatest hair,” she said of her curls. “And I actually took it for granted because I thought, ‘At least I got this hair for the rest of my life.’ I assumed it wouldn’t change.”