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Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze were smoldering on the big screen in Dirty Dancing, but it was on a prior project that the two first tested their chemistry.
The A Real Pain actress, 64, has revealed that her and Swayze's first love scene fizzled rather than sizzled.
The two were working on 1984's Red Dawn, an action film about a group of teens who take to the mountains and fight back after a Soviet invasion of the US that affected their small Colorado town.
The script called for a sex scene between leading man Swayze and relative newcomer Grey.
'As an actor, you're looking at all your stuff in the script, and you're like, "okay. I'm running. I'm shooting. I'm running. I'm throwing hand grenades. I'm killing myself with a hand grenade. But this is the only acting scene I get to do where I'm not doing action,"' she told The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast.
She said the sex scene was 'one of the more tender scenes which was, I thought, part of the reason I wanted to do the job.'
Jennifer Grey, 64, has opened up about her first on camera sex scene with her late co-star Patrick Swayze, revealing it wasn't for Dirty Dancing (Pictured in London in October)
However, when it came time to actually do the deed, the veteran actress revealed her co-star was inebriated.
'We were in this, you know, sleeping bag, and he was nervous or whatever, and he came into the sleeping bag drunk,' she explained.
She said the actor 'didn't know his lines. And then it got cut. And they said, "We'll come back and reshoot it." But, of course, they didn't.'
Grey explained the situation was not helped by the fact she 'was smoking a lot of weed in those days, too.'
'And so, I was super paranoid, and I was scared. I didn't sleep the whole night. So when I went in to shoot my big love scene, my big … romantic scene with him, I was so angry because I was, you know, all self-righteous.'
'Keep in mind, I'm super young actor,' she added. '[I was] really taking everything seriously, and maybe a little annoying … because I wanna do good.'
The actress revealed that during the shoot, some of her co-stars would play pranks on her, including putting 'firecrackers in my door.'
In the podcast conversation, Grey recalled meeting up with Swayze again ahead of a screentest for Dirty Dancing.
Grey and Swayze had worked together in 1984's Red Dawn as teens fighting against Soviet invasion of the US that included their small Colorado town. They were supposed to shoot a sex scene, but Grey said Swayze turned up drunk and didn't know his lines
The actress revealed she had been 'smoking a lot of weed in those days, too,' and 'was super paranoid, and I was scared. I didn't sleep the whole night.' The scene was cut from the film (seen here with Lea Thomspon, Doug Toby, Charlie Sheen, Swayze, C. Thomas Howell and Brad Savage)
Grey admitted she was hesitant to work with Swayze on Dirty Dancing because he and some of her other Red Dawn co-stars had pranked her during the film's production, but was convinced during their screentest together. 'He takes me in his arms and I was like, "Oh, boy. I'm done"'
'He pulled me down the hall and said to me, "I love you, I love you, and I'm so sorry. And I know you don't want me to do the movie,"' Grey has said of the interaction.
'And he got the tears in his eyes. And I got the tears in my eyes — not for the same reason. I was like, "Oh, this guy's working me." And he goes, "We could kill it — we could kill it if we did this."'
She said that Swayze, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2009 at age 57, convinced her after they began the screentest, explaining, 'We go in there and he takes me in his arms and I was like, "Oh, boy. I'm done."'
Dirty Dancing was a huge success, with the small budget film earning some $214 million at the box office.
English (US) ·