HOT GALLERY: 27 Years Later, Looking Back at the Stars of Dirty Dancing

Rhodes played Penny, Johnny’s dance partner at Kellerman’s who gets knocked up by ne’er-do-well waiter Robbie (Max Cantor). When she’s unable to dance with Johnny, it opens the door for Baby to become his partner—and for their romance to emerge.

Trained as a dancer and gymnast, Rhodes had already appeared in Flashdance and Staying Alive before being cast in Dirty Dancing. A minor pop sensation herself as lead singer of Animotion, Rhodes starred in ’80s music videos like Toto’s “Rosanna” and Richard Marx’s “Don’t Mean Nothing”—the latter of which was fateful, as she and Marx got married two years later, in 1989. The couple have three sons together. Sadly, they announced their separation in 2014.

Unlike her younger sister Baby, the more confident Lisa has no qualms about singing and dancing in front of the Kellerman’s audience. Her boyfriend Robbie cheats on her with Penny, getting her pregnant and then dumping her.

After a few more credits, including TV series Wiseguy and Ellen and the movie Stealing Home, Brucker decided to focus on being a mom. She has two daughters and still occasionally acts. “I can find happiness being a mother without acting, but I couldn’t find happiness acting without being a mother,” she told People magazine in 2002.

Baby starts out as “very insecure about her physical being, about her body,” Grey explained in an interview in 1987. “She’s been very serious... and meets this guy who makes her aware of her sexuality, of the fact that she’s a woman.” Grey was no stranger to the Borscht Belt setting of Kellerman’s—her grandfather Mickey Katz was a comedian and musician in the ’50s. And as for dance? Her father is the famed actor-dancer-choreographer Joel Grey, whose role as the MC in Cabaret earned him both a Tony and an Oscar. Grey and Swayze “knew each other quite well” before shooting Dirty Dancing, having costarred previously in Red Dawn.

Grey had played supporting roles—notably as the aggravated sister in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in which she had a hilarious scene with Charlie Sheen—before hitting it big in Dirty Dancing. But her career afterward slowed down, especially when, not long after Dirty Dancing, Grey had a nose job that went awry; instead of just removing a bump, it changed her look completely. “I went in the operating theater a celebrity—and came out anonymous,” she has said about it. “I’ll always be this once-famous actress nobody recognizes.” Well, not quite: She won season 11 of Dancing with the Stars (Grey and her partner, Derek Hough, performed a Viennese waltz to “These Arms of Mine”—which was also featured in a memorable Dirty Dancing scene). Next up for Grey is In Your Eyes, a sci-fi romance written by Joss Whedon—who, incidentally, directed her husband, Clark Gregg, as Agent Coulson in The Avengers.

He was the traditional, successful dad who expected nothing but the best for his daughters—even if he didn’t always realize what that meant. His prejudice toward Johnny and his preference for Baby’s “suitable” suitor, Neil Kellerman, are redeemed after he sees the light at the end of the movie: He realizes that Johnny was not the villain who got Penny pregnant only to abandon her.

A veteran Broadway actor—he originated the role of Julian Marsh in 42nd Street and El Gallo in The Fantasticks—Orbach had appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows by the time Dirty Dancing rolled around. But he’s best known for his role as Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order. When Orbach passed away in 2004 from prostate cancer, he had been such a beloved New York presence for so long that a portion of 53rd Street near where he lived was officially named Jerry Orbach Way. His Dirty Dancing costar Kelly Bishop described him as “one of those guys who wore his stardom so comfortably. I adored him, and I miss him.”

When she came to the set of Dirty Dancing, Bishop was actually slated to play the randy older woman Vivian out to get Johnny—but when the original actor cast to play Baby’s mother dropped out at the last minute, she was offered the part. “Take it, it’s better,” Jerry Orbach advised her, she told People magazine. “So I did it. He took me under his wing.”

Dirty Dancing was hardly the last time Bishop played a mom. Her best-known role was as Emily Gilmore on Gilmore Girls, and she also played Howard Stern’s mother in the semi-autobiographical movie Private Parts. Bishop also starred as the persnickety mother-in-law Fanny Flowers on the ABC Family series Bunheads.

Neil Kellerman, the son of the resort’s owner, attempts to woo Baby—but of course her heart belongs to Johnny.

A consummate New York theater guy, Price has directed shows including Candide (starring Patti LuPone and Kristin Chenoweth), 110 in the Shade (starring Audra McDonald), and a short-lived if much-ballyhooed production of Company (starring Neil Patrick Harris and Stephen Colbert). He cowrote as well as directed the musical A Class Act, which earned him a Tony nomination. He directed several episodes of Desperate Housewives and has won two Emmys, most recently for directing Sondheim! The Birthday Concert.

We had already seen Patrick Swayze in movies like The Outsiders and Youngblood—but it was as dance instructor Johnny Castle that he truly stole our hearts. His commanding physical presence as he sweeps Baby off her feet (literally) is just swoon-worthy. He learns from her too, inspired by her bravery in standing up for what’s right. And, of course, he had one of the most iconic lines in cinema history: “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

After Dirty Dancing, Swayze went on to star in other fan favorites, including Ghost and Point Break, as well as small but impactful roles in movies like Donnie Darko. The son of a choreographer, Swayze met his wife, Lisa Niemi, when she was a 15-year-old dance student (he was 19 at the time). In 2008, he had begun shooting a new TV series, The Beast, shortly before his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. When he died a year later, his legion fans mourned his passing, remembering him as both a luminous screen presence and, by all accounts, a kind and generous person.

Knight has a knack for having appeared in a bunch of movies you may not have realized—including as Kellerman’s camp activities director Stan in Dirty Dancing. (For the record, he also had roles in The Day After, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Jurassic Park, and Basic Instinct—that’s him as the sweating Detective Corelli in the infamous Sharon Stone interview scene).

Hello, Newman! Knight will, of course, forever be associated with his role as the scheming mailman who was Jerry’s nemesis neighbor on Seinfeld. He currently stars in the TV Land series The Exes and appears in the romantic comedy Excuse Me for Living.