Good Life Project - Jennifer Grey | Out of the Corner

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

When we consider the qualities and traits passed down throughout our family tree, we may think of the curly hair we share with a sibling or a natural talent like singing. But what about the not-so-pleasant traits, beliefs, or patterns that appear generation after generation that are hard to shake? Do we keep making these same old mistakes just because "old patterns die hard," as they say? Or will you be the one who takes a new path, no matter how hard or long it takes?Jennifer Grey is no stranger to taking the road less traveled. From her most visible standout moments, like her iconic role as the star of the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, to her personal journey to self-acceptance, Grey has found her way back to herself one step at a time. And you'll hear today that she's just as forthcoming about her journey as she is in her recently released memoir Out of the Corner.In this transparent conversation with her, we explore how Grey views and juggles her family's history and culture, her identity, and her role as the cycle breaker through the lens of her younger and present self. Her awareness of what her mother sacrificed to be a wife and mother shapes how Grey leads her life and chooses to tell her story now. And despite what patterns, gender roles, or responsibilities she was expected to bear or even did at one point, Grey is no longer worried about pleasing people but just being as real and true to herself as possible. You can find Jennifer at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Marin Hinkle about her life in theater, film, and TV.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I will never, ever not be associated with the line, nobody puts baby in a corner. And I thought, what if I really understood what it's about? What does that line mean? And then I realized how many of my stories kind of ended up with me being put in a corner. It just wasn't true if I dug deeper. So when we think about the qualities and traits passed down throughout our family tree, we may think of curly hair we share or natural talent like singing. But what about the sometimes not so pleasant traits or beliefs or patterns that appear

generation after generation that are hard to shake? Do we keep making these same old mistakes just because, quote, old patterns die hard, as they say? Or will you be the one who takes on a new path, no matter how hard or long it takes? So my guest, Jennifer Gray, is no stranger to taking the road less traveled. From her most visible standout moments, like her iconic role as the star of the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, to her personal journey to self-acceptance, Gray has found her way back to herself one step at a time. And you'll hear today that she's just as forthcoming about her

journey as she is in her recently released memoir, Out of the Corner. In this beautifully transparent conversation with her, we explore how Jennifer views and juggles her family's history and culture, her identity and her role as a cycle breaker through the lens of her younger and present self. Her awareness of what her mother sacrificed to be a wife and mother really shapes how Gray leads her life and chooses to tell her story. And despite what patterns and gender roles or responsibilities she was expected to bear, or even did at one point, Gray is no longer worried about pleasing people, but just being as real and true to herself as possible.

So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what's the difference between me and you? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So excited to dive into so many different points along the journey with you. Coming up in New York City, dad's Joel Gray, mom's Joel Wilder. I'm interested in your grandpa, actually, Mickey Katz. Because being somebody who's like spent my entire adult life in the city also, and as parents of the generation were sort of like the same thing. Did your parents play Mickey Katz records?

They didn't. But I remember hearing the name kicked around in the home, sort of like the old comedians and the old musicians. He was a big deal. Right. He was a really big deal. Maybe your grandparents. Exactly. No, exactly.

It was more my grandparents than anything else. So it's like you have this heritage, like multiple generation. Also interested in the fact that, and you speak about this in different ways, it was a deeply Jewish-oriented musicality and comedy, and showbiz was oriented around that. It was sort of like front and center. And when it sort of hits your dad's generation and then your generation, it seems like that becomes replaced with more of let's pull that back a bit. Let's not lead with that. Well, because it's the assimilation that was, it was so normalized. It was, as I say in my book, just savvy. It was what everyone did as if it was just accepted that it was best to be not too Jewish. Or if you're Jewish, you can be Jewish. A lot of Jews, like a lot of us Jews around, but maybe if you could just pull it back, you don't want to lead with it. Yeah. I mean, was that, was that an overt conversation in your family at all? Or was just

sort of like the subtext? It was never an overt conversation, but it was plain as the nose on my face because it was, I don't know, like, I don't remember remembering a time not knowing that my parents both had nose jobs. I don't remember a time hearing when and where my grandmother had her nose done and my aunt, my great aunt. And the name changes from Katz to Gray was always spoken about, never in overt terms like to Jewish. Never were those words spoken because being Jewish was awesome. Like we loved being Jewish. No one didn't like being Jewish. We loved the comedy.

We loved the gefilte fish. We loved the culture was so there was an enormous pride around being Jewish. And in New York, I kind of just thought everyone was Jewish. And I was talking to my best friend, Tracy Pollan, who also is written about in the book a lot. And she was saying the other day, she said, I mean, I didn't know that everyone in the world wasn't Jewish growing up in New York. She just thought, I mean, it was such it was like a shtetl, but we didn't know it was a shtetl. And so the idea that there was something that was not cool about being Jewish was something that never occurred to me. I knew because my dad was in Cabaret and because it takes place in Nazi Germany. And even though it was a musical on Broadway that was super entertaining and fun,

and as a child, I just thought it was cool. But then when we went to Munich to film the movie, to visit my dad, where they were filming the Fosse movie of the show, there was a feeling of understanding that the Germans didn't like us back in the day. And there was, I remember hearing about the shame of the young Germans when I was in Munich about the shame of their history and that it was hard for them or something or that they were, I don't know, it's just, I can't, when I was writing my book, they kept saying, write scenes, write scenes. And I was like, I can't remember scenes.

But I have a very vivid synesthetic memory, which doesn't really help you as a writer in a way because you can't really make scenes of it. But I can feel the you that I knew that because I was reading Anne Frank, the diary of Anne Frank as a kid, it was part of, I don't know if every kid reads that, but it was very much a part of growing up was understanding that there was this young girl Anne Frank. And I auditioned for the play when I was at Dalton. And I got hired to play Mrs. Van Damme. And I thought, wait, if I'm not going to get cast as Anne Frank, how will I ever get a job in this industry? It's like, wait, you're giving me the part of the old grandmother. Okay, I know I have an old soul or whatever. Just let me be Anne. But I knew that I identified with this very, very clear pride about being who I was. And a lot of our friends were Jewish.

My parents' friends were Jewish. And so many of the geniuses that I was growing up around were Jewish. Leonard Bernstein. I mean, like everybody was Jewish. And there was also that other kind of a little bit of, what's the word? It was kind of like, there was the goyim that was like the other. And it was like, it was always considered better to like, they might have nice apartments or, you know, nice chintz on their fabric is very goyish, but it was always a little bit of a dig. So it wasn't like we, it was like we had that chosen people feeling. So when my grandfather was such, such, such a, such a big deal when I was a kid, when I was little in the 60s.

And when I would go to Barney Greengrass with him and it was like walking in with Gandhi was just crazy. It was just like super, super, he was very beloved and it was very emotional people's attachment to him because they'd grown up in their house listening to his records. I think he maybe had 20 records on Capitol Records. He was considered such an incredible musician and his, you know, he was a band leader and his clarinet, like he played the clarinet and he was considered one of the most incredible musicians of the jazz world. And then he did these kind of weird Al Yankovic parodies of pop songs because what he was doing was being kind of creating I could tell, was that when my family, like my grandparents and their, all the people in that time were fleeing Ukraine and Eastern Europe to save their lives because they were anxious because they were the ones who were highly vigilant. And they were like, oh, no, we got to get out of here. They came to Brooklyn and Cleveland and these places, and they would find other anxious Jews and they would make anxious babies because it was the

chill ones that just basically got slaughtered back there. Right. So it was this, everyone had come here to survive, but there was this longing for their music, for the old country. And then to make it here, you had to learn English. None of them spoke English when they came. Some of them were illiterate, even throughout their life. And they came here, and in order to make it here, they would need to be American. And they'd go to Ellis Island, and their names would be changed. And they would be shortened. And instead of Rosenberg, it would be Rosen or Rose or like, I don't know what it was, but it was like, everything was kind of cut back to be less Jewish

and not to lead with your Jewishness and to be like, to fit in. Like when you go to a school and you're like, okay, what do I have to do to fit in with the cool kids? And it was a survival. It wasn't just cool. It was like how to make it, how to create a business for yourself. And so there was a lot of eschewing of the roots. And there was this longing and probably melancholy about what they'd left behind. So while everyone was trying to be less Jewish, my grandfather came in and went, I'm going to make you feel like you're an American with where you came from. And we're going to Yiddishize pop songs so you can feel like this is your music too. It's so interesting, though, that that lays the stage, that sets the scene for then the generation under him to say, okay, so this is definitely part of us, but we're going to visually make changes to try and assimilate because we think that the industry is in a place now where it's like the pendulum is swinging in guess what? I am me. And guess what? You could be

I am me and not be able to make a living or not be able to survive in the climate. And the climate was, we were coming out of the 50s. We were coming, you know, it was a very clean cut. You know, like the music was super chirpy and popular. And there was no, it didn't have the same, it didn't have the same, it didn't have the same it was just like lacking in that kind of texture. And so the idea of, well, you can be smart. It's savvy to assimilate and pass, to pass for being not an immigrant, to pass for being, to be able to pass for someone who was born there, who belonged there, who could call it their home without feeling like they were somehow interlopers, right? Yeah. And I mean, so it's interesting. You have that as part of the family culture. And then the other thing that you write, which I thought was fascinating, and this is actually, these are your words. Mm-hmm. And my grandmother. Right. So it's like multi-generations. My mom's mom had wanted to be an artist. She wanted to be a pianist. And I think she had been, had of being and living an artistic life. And her mother,

who was a single mom, said, you're going to go to pharmaceutical school. And she's like, what? And she said, and she made her, she basically said, this is what you have to do. And she never wanted to be that. And she ended up meeting her husband. She was a resident at his pharmacy and he had become, he had taught himself English. He had taught himself to do, he came over at 16 and he came here and he put himself through pharmaceutical school. He did the most incredible, like heavy lifting and became basically the doctor of Brownsville, Brooklyn, because it was like the urgent care of the community. And he was also a communist. And it was like really like very, very, I don't know,

it's just a very different time where people could have a community where they would come to be helped with physical problems because it was like being a doctor, right was the doctor of the community and he was also a conscientious objector which nobody did back in those days you know they were pacifists they believed in i don't know it's just like and then when i met him he was just a depressing, really sad man. And I never knew anything about what he had gone through to give us our life here now, what he had given up. And his wife had given up her career and her dreams and was depressed. And basically, she was an invalid for my mom's childhood.

And then my mom learned she couldn't be just who she wanted to be. She had to be a caretaker. And so every, it's like the caretaking became almost like the Russian doll. You know, all the caretakers within the caretakers, because nobody is really given license to pursue their wildest dreams, right? Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

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available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. So what changes with you then?

Because it seems like when it hits your generation, the cycle changes. I'm curious how that happens. Well, I think what I saw was I grew up in a family where my mom had been an actress for the first few years of my life, but I don't really remember that. I remember having a nanny who was a Jehovah's Witness and would sit with her back to the stage while my mom was rehearsing because she wasn't allowed to watch entertainment. And so I have that weird memory. But I don't really remember my mom as a professional because I was too young and it became, all I knew was that my dad had the good job and that my mom was sad. My mom was sad, probably angry, depressed, and really had been so talented and so promising. And at one point just, you know, decided, yes, I'll marry him.

Who's, you know, definitely on a faster train. He was farther along. He was really a young up and coming star. All he was doing ever was just rehearsing and performing and then doing another show and traveling. And we would be in, we would just follow him around wherever he needed to be living, wherever he needed to go on tour. And I learned that it was our job because he was giving us this incredible life to just be the best, you know, supportive team possible. And I knew, I remember I found that, you know,

old school work of mine that my mom saved, where I was saying like what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I wrote like, you know, what do I want to be? I'd like to be a veterinarian, but I wouldn't want to have to hurt animals or do some like give them shots or something. And I would like to be a mother, but that would mean that I wouldn't get to travel. I would be basically hamstrung. And then I just remember seeing that my dad was getting the good deal as far as I could see. And she was frustrated. She was singing a lot and you could feel the kind of longing for the life that she had given up and so the idea was you have to make a choice and my mom was a feminist

and very social justice activist and they were bringing you know the ballet dancers from Russia the panoffs would come and they were just oh and then she was working in Harlem with underprivileged kids with Neto Gorman. And it was just like, she was always looking for something that would feel like it was for her that she was making a difference in the world. And so I knew that she would say to me, you have to pursue your thing. Like, you know, my mom couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. You have to be the one. And she would work for Gloria Steinem.

She worked at Ms. Magazine. She worked, you know, trying to get Geraldine Ferraro elected. her desire for me to eclipse her thwarted dreams and for that I would not give it up for a man or for a family that I would be able to go forward and live the dreams that she had lost. And so I knew intellectually that I needed to do that. And I knew that I loved babies and children and I wanted to, and I was a boy crazy and always wanted to be in a relationship and was like, you know, nearly engaged a thousand times and actually engaged a couple of times. But the truth is,

is that I kept being attracted to people who were not really going to be the wind beneath my wings, if you will. And she would look at me like, what are you doing? Don't do what I did. And there's this kind of epigenetics where you're actually genetically, it's expressed in your genes, the trauma of the past. And there's a way that we're wired. And the wiring is basically setting us up to do exactly what was done before us. You're trying so hard thing to do. Because as you say,

it's like, it gets into the DNA through cycles and generations, and it becomes the fabric of just the, you know, it's the texture. And we don't realize we're wearing garments made of these assumptions, and yet it controls so much of what we do and don't do. So for you to say, okay, so for me, this is going to be different. It's interesting to me. And it also, I mean, everything that you just shared, also, it sets up, it shows so much of what would come back to you a bit later in life, right? So you step out into the world and you eventually say, okay, so I am going to go and I have this passion to act. And you end up in the neighborhood playhouse,

this legendary place in the city. And which both my parents had studied with Sandy Meisner. My mom had gone to the playhouse. My dad had studied in Sandy's class. I mean, I was doing a lot of the stuff that they had done because I had a cool family. I wasn't going to do the opposite. There was a lot of connective tissue. And I grew up around Wynn Handman and all these people who were the best teachers in the city and the kingpins, right? Yeah, which gives you a really powerful foundation. So when you step out of their neighborhood playhouse, by the way, it's also not beyond having all these incredible people in there as, and actually you write about this, the phrase stays in my mind that you wrote, the teachers had what you described as psychological brass knuckles.

Which was really considered de rigueur in those days. There was no great teacher. Right. It was sort of like, it's a brutal industry. We're going to prepare you for this. And we're doing this for your own good. And whether it was Stella Adler, or like, I don't know if Lee Strasberg was as rough, but I know that Stella and these people were so shaming and so soul crushing. And so it's so abusive by today's standards, 100%. And it was interesting because to me, I was like, it's worth it. It's worth it. They're going to make sure that I don't do bad acting because they made you so scared of doing bad acting. And to this day, I'm just always terrified as opposed to like, oh, guess what? You at your worst is not going to be terrible. It's okay. It's not going to be that different. The idea,

the terror that they instilled in us. Yeah. It's interesting how cultures change. And in no small part, I mean, the industry was very different then also. The world was very different then. Yeah. You think? Oh my God. Yeah. A little bit.

I'm trying to find a good teacher for my daughter. And it's like, where are the great teachers? Oh, that's interesting. Where are the teachers that teach the whole person, that teach in a holistic way? I mean, I started working with this coach when she was about five, like 15 years ago, who changed my life. And she is still, her name is Kim Gillingham, and she does dream work to work with the unconscious. To bring in, it was like Jung and Actor's Studio and Marian Woodman. And it's basically like such an incredible way to think about art as being a way to kind of till your unconscious and ask your creative unconscious what it would have you do to be closer to it, to see what needs to be worked through with this character, with this

part and ask your dreams to show you what it is you need to be, you know, like working with imagery and objects and songs. And it's just such a gentle, much more exciting way to teach and to approach a job, which is basically what does your soul need to learn? And it can use this part to learn something that is coming to you, whether you want it or not. So you might as well ask for it to be revealed. Yeah, that's so interesting. So it's almost like instead of what does the industry demand? It's like, what does your own personal evolution ask for? To contribute to the greater good. Yeah. So fascinating.

Because there's collective unconscious. And if it's coming from a really organic place of healing, it's probably not impossible that I'm going to be hooking into something that is more universal. Right? Yeah. I mean, it's like you think of that in the context of the great writers. Basically, anybody who taps into some artistic vein that somehow goes out into the world and speaks to the zeitgeist in some way, there's something bigger going on there.

It's not just one person's story. There's something that's coming through them and relating in a powerful way to large numbers of people. Yeah. And like what I, when I was writing the book, I really thought to myself, Oh God, they want me to write a dirty dancing book. I can't think of anything I'd be less interested in doing. And then I thought, well, what would I like to get out of it? You know, what, like, I would never just write a book to like, people like, oh, there's a lot of famous people in your life. I was like, if you think that if you ever met me, you would know that that's just not like the idea of like using other people to become something

like it's just against the grain for me. So I mean, it's anathema to me. So I was thinking, well, I really noticed that I'm so like, I will never, ever not be associated with the line. Nobody puts baby in a corner and it's a cringy line. It's a, whatever it is, it's become a thing. And I thought, what if I really understood what it's about? What does that line mean? Because Patrick didn't want to say it. We hated it. We thought it would be cut. He practically refused to say it. It was one of those things where, okay, I'll do one like this for you, but I'm going to do something else. You know what I mean? It was like, no one's ever going to use it because it's bad. And then I thought, well, what does it really mean? What does this movie

really mean? What is the underpinning of this frothy, popular, rom-commy, you know, whatever this romance thing is. And I realized it's about what does it mean to be in a corner? And then I realized how many of my stories kind of ended up with me being put in a corner. And I went, oh, come on, I can't be, I can't be the opposite of what I'm known for. What if, how can this be? And then I just started to look at my, the stories I'd been telling a certain way for my whole life. And they got kind of fossilized in the moment that they happened. Moments of like consciousness or development from whence I came, right? So when it happened, they just got told, like frozen in time from the moment I was young and it happened.

And I thought, well, maybe there's another way to look at things because I'm now where I sit from this vantage point of being 62. Maybe I'm not telling the story as deeply as I could tell it now with this hindsight being 2020. And I went, oh, there's all these, because the idea of being a victim in any way and having somebody victimize me is such a, it's completely counter to anything I would ever aspire to. It's like the last thing I would ever want. So I thought, well, why do I,

someone who hates the idea of anyone being a victim, unless you're actually a victim, which obviously that's not what I'm talking about. And I thought just like the idea of being disempowered, the idea of somebody, you know, having the last word or deciding who you are or what lack of worth is. And I was like, that is disgusting to me. I would never associate with that. Then why is it that my stories kind of sound like that? So when I decided to write them, I thought, well, let me write all the ways in which I've been felt like I'd been in a corner. So I wrote them all down, you know, all the crap stories that happened.

Blah, blah, blah. And then I went, wait a minute. What if the reason I'm still telling it this way is because I'm seeing myself in a corner and that I didn't have a say and that I didn't have a part. And I thought, what if I looked at it because I know that people do what it is they want to do in general. Right. And I thought, well, clearly I wanted to stay with that guy more than I wanted to. Like I had other reasons for staying. It wasn't that I was letting, so it's like I just turned it around. And all of a sudden the book became more interesting to me to write. And it became more, it was very revelatory because I just saw it differently. And once I saw how I'd put myself in the corner

and how I had been telling a story the wrong way, where I wasn't really being honest, even though I consider myself an extremely honest, transparent person, I didn't even know the ways I'd been lying. And I say lying, not like obviously lying. It just wasn't true if I dug deeper I wanted to stay with him because I wanted to stay with him because I liked what was good about it and then I realized it's so familiar with something I was growing up growing up around and then I just started to have

compassion for myself and for the other people of how understandable it would be that I would be going back to what felt familiar, even if it wasn't healthy. Right. And there's no one wrong. There's no one bad. It's like, there's a, it's, it's such a therapeutic process. You know, I think it's interesting because sometimes we're asked to have compassion, you know, there, but for God's grace, go out. We look at another person and maybe it's a person that we feel really ill will towards. Maybe we have rage or anger towards them, and we're sometimes asked, you know, like,

if you lived their lives, if you grew up in their place, if you, like, would you have made different choices? And oftentimes the answer is no, like if you really were that person. But to go back and literally do that to yourself, to prior incarnations, prior moments of yourself, I mean, it's sort of like the sweet spot between, you know, therapy and anthropology, but it's all about you. Well, what's really

interesting is how we tell our story is one of the most impactful things we can do. Tell me more. Well, if I tell you the story of somebody who grew up. Okay, so I have to look at my dad's mom. My dad's mom was basically tortured in her family, treated like horribly, abused with her mean sisters. It was just awful, awful, awful, right? That's the story that got passed down to me. I wasn't there. I don't know.

But I knew they called her like the black frog or something like and she was the beauty of the family but she was so treated poorly that when she met my grandfather Mickey Katz and he was you know so poor and he was supporting his family at 13 like as a musician like or at least really contributing he had like decided to save the family. So he had this savior thing. He sees this beautiful young girl in the train when he's just out of high school about to go on tour. Like he's like a prodigy musician. Like he was incredible. So he swoops in and saves her from her family. And she goes from feeling like crap about herself to being like, he's like, oh my God, look at this gorgeous babe. And she goes from feeling like crap about herself to being like,

he's like, oh my God, look at this gorgeous babe. And she's incredible. I want to marry her. She's 13. He's 15. They get married like two years later. They're basically children. He's saving her, right? She feels broken, you know, and she then becomes the wife of a guy who's an up and coming star. She has a bunch of children. She has all of this incredible creative energy. She has nowhere to put it because she now has two children, two boys, and her husband's out on the road becoming a star. And all of the frustration of this unmet, all of this, she was such a powerful creative. She had no place to put it. So she gets the son, my dad, who's this beautiful young boy, and she just plugs into him

and uses him like a puppet, right? And then she puts him in acting school and he's getting all this attention as a child actor. And now she's living through him, right? Completely neglecting her other son, who is like one of the greatest people on earth, by the way. And like one of the finest humans. But he gets neglected. His neglect makes him, fires him up to do incredible things in life. The neglect. And my dad is fully like puppeteered by her drive and desire to become famous and make a mark through him. She uses him that way, right? And he then is getting too much attention, too much

energy. And he then becomes an actor and sees, oh my God, I'm so powerful. I, all these people love me because they're crying. They're watching me on stage die. And then he gets this false sense of who he is because it's all about performance. And he's not really a whole person who's loved. He is being used as like a narcissistic resource for her. And all of these broken people are doing their best,

but they're actually not. They're not whole. They're broken, and they don't have a sense of their worth because it's neglected abuse, but it's not obvious. No one's being, I mean, he was being emotionally abused. And he tells her he had an affair with a guy as a teenager, and she doesn't touch him or talk to him for a year. That is not love. We all know that is not love. What that is, is narcissistic abuse. It's, I will love bomb you. You are going to be my person, my inappropriately too tight, my mate in a way. I'm bonded to you. And now there's a rupture. That damage is, to me, I can't think of a worse thing

than to be discarded by the mother that was obsessed with you. And that kind of fracturing, I don't know where the repair ever comes from that. But then he realizes he can't be Jewish. He can't be gay. He doesn't want to be the son of a famous Jewish performer, even though he loved his dad. He wanted to be mainstream. He does his nose. He decides, I want a family. I can't have a family in the 50s and be gay. I can't have children. I can't be a star. So he figures out how to survive in this world that is so unkind and so leaving no room for him to be himself, to be lovable and beautiful as with his face,

with his name, with his sexuality. Each of these stories breaks my heart for my grandmother, for my father. And no, nothing is binary. It's not like a good childhood or a bad childhood. It's everything. It's love and neglect. It's adoration and complete abandonment. And that stuff is really what is under all of the other stuff. And then the survival and the talent that pushes through and the need, right? And he is madly in love with my mother. And my mother's, he's just absolutely obsessed with her and in love with her. And they get married. And then she is having her problem

of having never had even a childhood because she was taking care of her bedridden mother, who was also medicating and having back operations, who has a terrible back. My mom has a terrible back. I have a terrible back. That's genetic, right? And her mom was a pharmacist. So she had access to all the drugs. Who knows how much she was like, you know, chicken or egg, what happened? And my mom never even has a childhood. She's just a caretaker. And her dad pleads to her because his wife is in bed. So there's this kind of enmeshment that is just generational. So I see all of this while I'm looking at me and I'm thinking each generation, we evolve so much. It's light years. Each person is striving so hard with all of their might to give the better life to their kid.

And with each generation, we do. But the heartache and the neglect and the self-neglect and the self-abandonment and the just surviving to make it through and to push through and to do the right thing and to accommodate whatever the culture, the climate will allow because there's also the external pressure with it plus what was happening internally. So I look at this like an anthropological study of like, of course, of course my dad had to do that. Of course my mom had to do that. Of course, my mom had to do that. Of course, it wasn't modeled for her that a woman can do anything. It was more like we can do anything and then we don't. You know what I mean?

There was a lot of strength and power behind these incredibly powerful women. My grandmother, my mom's mom, my mom, just very powerful, strong women just trying to be feminists in a world before they were feminists. They were very early days feminists, right? My grandmother went to pharmacist school in the 30s and the 40s. Like, who does that? It's just, you know, that kind of brains and the desire to have more, the hunger to do better than the generation before. I'm stunned by it. And I think about the ways in which it wasn't modeled for me, but I was taught that I should have a career that I shouldn't let. I shouldn't just be at the service of a man.

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It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. When you describe sort of like the excavation and you're looking at all the stories of your family and you see the heartbreak in those stories, eventually that excavation, especially when you sit down to write a book, that leads to you and to your stories. Were you able to look at your own stories and feel that same heartbreak for yourself?

And I'm curious if you were, like, was there a story that you had told for yourself? And I'm curious if you were, like, what was there a story that you had told about yourself that was the point where you really said, this is where my heart breaks for me? That's a really good question. And yes, of course, I start to well up when you're asking me the question. Because when you're in it, when you're fighting for your life, when you're in it when you're fighting for your life when you're in it you just I didn't feel it for myself and when I look back the self-abandonment is the thing that breaks my heart the most the lack of fight for myself as I would, I'm better at fighting for other people than for myself. And that I would, the generosity, the way I would see someone else's side more than I could do that for myself. And even though my parents loved me and gave me the best

life and I had such a good life compared to all the lives that I saw growing up. And I knew I was lucky that I never missed a meal. And then I had doctors and my parents sent me to better schools than they had gone to. And they're good people, but, you know, really like good, like just moral fiber and just like doing the right thing, how could I find myself in such, as I say in the book, such dark waters as a young person? What would make me find myself in these pickles? And I say that like jokingly because they weren't pickles. They were awful.

And I thought, well, how did I was so loved? How could I have? It's more than self-destructive. It's more like... It was like I was responding to something that was unsaid, that was not visual to the naked eye. There was an energy or something in me that was trying to make sense of stuff that was,

I don't know, it's like subterranean energy that was working on me, and that everything is not what it seems. And while things look really great on the outside, there must have been other stuff going on. You know, being super, super close to my dad was a really great thing. And I felt super lucky that I was so close with him and we were so tight. And then at the same time, looking back on it now, it was, and I just idolized him and just everything about him was so cool and groovy. And then I just think, why was I so anxious to be an adult?

Why was I so anxious? Why was I drawn to gay men? And why was I so busy trying to individuate and separate to the point where I was putting myself in harm's way? Why was it so hard to grow up in a way? Because everyone, you know, it's a natural, it's very, it's just developmental. We need to individuate. We need to separate from our families. We need to separate from our parents. And to be such a good girl and to be such a pleaser and such a perfectionist and such a devoted, like, I will never do anything to

displease you to be able to figure out who I was to have to really like have this other life where I am just like drawn to this other stuff of that, which is the opposite and what the extremes of that and to have compassion. Cause when I was young, I was like, yeah, I'm so good. Now I'm so bad. Well, guess what? I wasn't that good. I wasn't that bad. My parents weren't that good. They weren't that bad. We were all, all of it. It was yes and. Yeah. When you reach a point in your life where, you know, you write about, you write about the dirty dancing days, you write about the conversation with your mom, and you finally saying against the backdrop of all the assimilation that you saw your parents and your grandparents do, that she's suggesting, oh, maybe you do this thing too.

And you resisted fiercely, eventually do it. You have surgery on your nose. I mean, literally, if you, like I'm sure you do, as if anyone, if anyone growing up in the world that I grew up in, just nose jobs were not a big deal. They were just, it was like a rite of passage. I didn't actually have a bat mitzvah, but most people do it before their bat mitzvah or whatever. And if they want to be actors, they definitely do it. It was just a kind of understood thing because there was no one I write about in the book. There was no one who looked like me that were acting. There was like having real careers, like sustainable careers where they could make a living and go on doing that and not have to take another job or give it up.

Right. There was Barbara Streisand who had an insane voice that was like no matter. There was nothing she could do. As long as she was singing, she could do anything. Right. She was that. And there was Cher. And she was.

And my mom said, well, she had Sonny and she was also a singer. There was almost no examples I had of people who looked like me. And I just never thought, like I thought about my nose too much. I didn't like it. I didn't like that I knew I was really pretty and that boys liked me and girls liked me and I was popular and I was a cool girl, like all of that. I didn't feel like the ugly duckling, but I did not like the fact that I, when I started going up for jobs,

I could see that I was not going to be getting the commercials. I wasn't going to be getting, there was no girls on the Brady Bunch or my three-sector. There was just nothing for me. Everybody either had a nose job or was born with a small nose. And if people weren't born with a small nose, they had their nose made

smaller. That was just what people did. And so if you were flat chested, you got breast implants. If you were at a bat, you had a nose that was considered Jewish or a bump on it, or it looked too ethnic. I don't care who you are. That's just what people did and they still do. It's not really far-fetched, but I had this thing in me, which was, I did not want that. I was the only one. Meanwhile, I was thinking about it too much, talking about it too much, asking about it too much, mad about it too much, staring at people's noses instead of watching their performance. It became almost an obsession because I couldn't see my own nose unless I was in pictures, photographs. We didn't take selfies

then. We weren't filming ourselves. If you did a photo session, you'd see your nose. And I wasn't working enough to see my nose in action. but I knew that I could see my nose as it was reflected in how I was being perceived. I could see it and I could tell that people liked me or they thought I was pretty or sexy or guys liked me, but I knew that it was like I was going to have to overcompensate for this thing that I could not see because it's in the middle of my face. I'm looking out. It's like looking for your glasses when they're on your head. You just can't see it. And I decided that it was to me about self-esteem and I was going to love myself as I was. And I was going to be so fucking good

that they wouldn't be able to not hire me. And I had just a lot. It was a lot of energy around my nose. And when my mom said, you know, I think you should maybe do your nose when you're not getting work. And I was like, very, very beautiful, blue eye, blonde, flaxen, like straight hair, tiny button nose, giant blue eyes, just people would just faint over him. And I was like, yeah, he's really beautiful. You know, and then all of a sudden, I realized I was like, you know, the ugly friend. And I just thought, well, I need to be more, I need to like be my nose's keeper because I didn't believe in it. I didn't like the idea of doing anything to myself. So I basically was like making some kind of political stand

until I got dirty dancing. And then all of a sudden I was like, see, I was right. I knew I could do it. I stuck with it. I'm now 28. I wasn't 17. I was, I'd been going through this like, you know, nose dilemma for many, many years. I'd been trying to make a living. I was having a really hard time getting parts because I was too pretty for the ugly girl, too ugly for the pretty girl. I say ugly and pretty in quotes. I mean, you know, it's whatever is considered palatable or enviable or the style. Everything goes through trends, right? And the idea is Meryl Streep was the only person I knew who had like a really strong nose, who was really making it as a as a movie star and on you know on stage and man if you want

to feel bad about yourself just compare yourself to Meryl Streep I have to be that good and then you realize that like oh she has a big nose that can be anything she's kind of like got the chitty chitty bang bang of noses like she can do she can play Jews and non-Jews. She can play Nora Ephron. She can play Sophie Joyce. She can play high wasps. She can do anything. It's like, how does her nose, how is it so, you know, able to fit? And I was like, I didn't have one of those. And so I finally, you know, decided to do it. And it was horrific because I couldn't make a living after I'd become famous. I thought, well, now that I got the big movie and I'm the star of the movie and then just nothing. And I didn't also look at the other parts, which were that I was, you know, making poor

professional choices based on my relationship and putting my boyfriend and his life and his career and his, you know, our car accident we were in all like putting everyone ahead of myself as opposed to like, is it the nose or is it the fact that I didn't come to my own rescue? Right. It's like, it's, it's like the cycle that you had worked so hard to break for so many years. There's still this subtext of like, like you said, there's, it's almost like a DNA label thing. It's really hard to fight against that. When push comes to shove, if you're a good person, you take care of somebody who's more in trouble than you are. That's what a good person does. And ambition for a woman is a very, for me, it's always been like, I always wish to be more

ambitious. I always wish to be more ambitious. I always wish to have the courage to believe and fight for myself the way I would fight for someone else. It's not always considered really attractive quality in women. People can, I don't know, to me it was kind of like a good person puts people ahead of ambition. And that was like something that was just in me, you know? I mean, this leads to years of struggle, years of you being all of a sudden, you know, like one of the best known people in the world to people not recognizing you on the street. And as you say, there's a lot of trauma involved in that. But eventually you get to a point where you write,

these are your words, there's also something beautiful about being stripped bare. The less input I got from the outside world, the more negative the input, the more I was left on my own to determine who and what I was. You're starting to say, okay, so where's the gift in this? How do I go deep inside with this and actually start to see these different stories and start to understand beyond all of this, beyond what I'm told the industry wants, beyond what I feel about this thing in the center of my face, what's really going on here? It was honestly, Jonathan, it was so not virtuous. It was desperation because I had been, it was before we knew the expression cancel culture. Yeah.

And I did not understand what had happened. And I couldn't make sense of it. And I was being misunderstood in such a global and with no end in sight and no forgiveness and so much blame that was, it was like the perfect hero's journey. It was exactly the gates of hell. There's nothing that could have been worse for me than that. Because I was born to be a pleaser and to be understood and to be able to explain.

And nobody was interested or believed me or cared. And it just had this teeth that literally forced me to my knees and forced me to let go of everything that I had. All the things that I had just assumed were the ways I could feel good. Right. Like there was no money. There were no job opportunities. There was disdain. It was like, like weird strangers just having an opinion about my self loathing or how I ruined myself. Or I was, I was like, Yeah, I'm self destructive. I'm not that self destructive. I hate myself a little. I don't hate myself the way you hate, think I hate myself. And like, I'm offended that you think I should hate myself as much because that was just not the case. So it was really taking back the entire

narrative. It was basically, I was forced to my knees and I am really not into suffering. And there was, it was a relentless slog of, I'm talking about decades, not a rough couple of months. I'm talking about, oh, I was taught like if you work really hard and you're a really good person and you show up on time and you put other people first and you're talented and you care about your work, you will get Tonys, you will get Oscars, you will be able to support yourself and your family for the rest of your life because that's what I saw. And all of a sudden I had no options. And also then people will love me

and good things will happen for me. And all of a sudden it was just game over. And what it did was I saw myself go from the work, the relationships, the money, everything that I thought would make me feel good about myself. That was like, well, those are the basic things, right? You have a relationship, you have the ability to make a living. People love you. You do a good job. You're able to grow. Nothing was working. And that's when I hit my bottom when I was like oh something like I can't do this like I had nothing and that's when I started going to meetings where they talked about what other people think of you is none of your business right okay And what makes someone successful? OK. Then I had to figure out how to redefine success and then deciding, well, let's say I just don't drink for one day.

I was like, that's not hard. I can do that. Just do that one day at a time. And then stop thinking about yourself. Stop thinking about how you can get and start thinking about what you can give. And I was like, okay, that's easy. I'm really good it might be, I'm not the worst of it. You know, if you are, you're not drinking today, you're a success. And I was like, well, that's a little, that's a little, like, I don't know if I buy that, but they're like, yeah, try that. And I was like, okay. And then I just started to rebuild from the bottom up. My reason for being here is not to get attention and make money and to get, but to understand that I'm here to give, but not in a codependent way, not in a transactional way, but to give for fun and for free and to feel like, well, it may not be doing this. And does it need to be this? No. Do I need to be famous? No. Do I need to feel like my life is worth something and that I'm on this earth and on this planet to work through my stuff and be of service? Yes. And then suddenly from that kind of really basic approach, I started to feel myself

without any of the outside stuff and like how well this book is doing and everything that's been happening. I barely feel it. I want to feel it, but I'm really, I've got other stuff going on. And this other stuff, like I write it in the book, like fame, just, it looks like it's a thing that's going to be amazing. And you get up into it, it's like clouds and you get up into the clouds and it's just, there's nothing there. It just like, when you're looking on an airplane, you see all the clouds and you go up into it and then you're there. It doesn't have the destination that it promises. It's lovely. But to me, if people are entertained by the book, feel distracted from things that are hard for them and gives them an escape, if watching my movies does that, if reading the book gives them a taste of not feeling alone

and being part of the world and that we are all kind of the same in terms of our basic needs and our feelings of alienation and loneliness and wanting to feel like there's there's a reason for me being on this earth and it's not about pleasing people it's about just being as real as possible so that hopefully someone feels less alone from my having written those words or being in that movie or what i'm here to do if that's's just my true north, that's all I need. I know it sounds a little preachy, but I don't mean it that way. I really mean it like it's just when you lose everything. I've had like six spinal surgeries. I've had thyroid cancer. I've had a knee surgery, a foot surgery, and I'm just still like, I just

want more joy and more connection, more joy, more connection, and believing that the connection will come any way. It can come in any shape. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container, a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I think about tune into joy, tune into joy. The joy is kind of the last thing our culture tells us to pursue. And joy is so big and small. Like it comes in so many forms. It could be as simple as just like cuddling with my dog or looking at your face and thinking, look at this man. This is,

look at this podcast he's doing amidst all the pain he's in. Like to me, it's just so small. The, these like little beads of joy. And if I can string them together and stay in this moment, this exact moment, now this one, now this one, this moment is so expansive and free and beautiful and doesn't need to be any different. To really stay in the moment is where joy is for me. And to stay out of the stories of the past and the future. Because they're usually, we make them kind of scary and we have such a bias to the negative, you know, survival mechanisms.

But the truth is this moment, everything's okay. Thank you. Before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation that we had with Maren Hinkle about her life in theater and film and TV, and really centering her sense of identity and who she is and the work that she does in the world. You'll find a link to Mara's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check

out my new book, Sparked. It will reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest

charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.