Jennifer Grey is noted for having a nose job that she came to regret because “you look kind of like that woman in that movie.”
Jennifer Grey played herself in all 26 episodes of the 1999 - 2001 television show It’s Like, You Know… . She joked about her nose job. She talked about how people would tell her that she looked like Jennifer Grey except for some odd change. They would tell her that it was strange that she had the same name as her too.
Jennifer Grey is also very well known as Jeannie Bueller, the older sister to Matthew Broderick’s title character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
I’m pretty sure she was the younger sister.
That was the way the story was planned. Don’t know offhand if it was stated in the movie.
Well, she got a car before he did, so it seems natural enough to assume that she got her license first because she was older.
Jennifer Grey is two years older than Matthew Broderick. It’s not clear what their relative ages are in the movie. I recall reading somewhere that the movie was so confused that it’s not clear who is supposed to be older in the movie. I recall reading that some things in the movie made it seem as if they were in the same grade in the movie. There are two possibilities about what happened according to the movie if they were in the same grade. They could be twins. It could be that one is less than a year older so they were in the same grade even if they weren’t twins. It’s possible for the two children to be only ten months different in age, and it’s possible to be less than that if the older one was born prematurely.
Or one of them could have either skipped a grade or been held back at some point.
I meant that it’s possible to be less than that if the younger one was born prematurely.
Jeannie: “Wait, you’re letting him stay home? I can’t believe this. If I was bleeding out my eyes, you guys would make me go to school. This is so unfair.”
I can’t recall if any scenes actually showed her at school. IMO, this quote places her squarely in high school. Since Ferris is a senior, I took all this to mean Jeannie is younger. The twins theory never occurred to me, though!
Iirc Jeannie Buehler kissed Charlie Sheen’s character in the police station, so it would be kinda creepy if Jeannie was much younger than Ferris, who was a high school senior (so probably 16-18). I’m going with the twins theory.
The shooting script for Ferris Bueller is no help.
It describes all of the characters in their first mentions (including two younger siblings cut from the movie).
"FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF"1 BLACK SCREEN 1
MAIN TITLES IT'S SILENT. A BEAT...AND AN EXPLOSION OF SOUND. A HOUSEHOLD IN THE MORNING. KIDS GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL. CLOCK RADIOS. KITCHEN APPLIANCES. SHOWERS. FIGHTING. PEOPLE YELLING. DOG BARKING. APPLIANCES BUZZING. CAR HORNS. IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE YOUR HOUSE DID. STREAMS OF ROCK'N ROLL FADE IN AND OUT. HUEY LEWIS TO LIONEL RITCHIE TO HUSKER DU. SURROUND MAKES IT FEEL LIKE YOU'RE IN THE ROOM. AN AURAL TOUR OF A HOUSE ON A SCHOOL MORNING. BEGINING IN THE KITCHEN AND MOVING UPSTAIRS. FATHER'S VOICE (TOM) Where's my wallet?! SEVEN YEAR OLD BOY (TODD) YOU IDIOT!! TWELVE YEAR OLD GIRL (KIMBERLY) MOM! TODD SHUT-UP! **EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL (JEANIE)** I NEED A TOWEL!!SNIP
2 CLOSE-UP. FERRIS 2
**An eighteen year-old boy.** He's staring lifelessly at CAMERA. His mouth's open. His eyes are bugged-out. His tongue is fat and dry in his mouth. He's laying in bed, on his side.3 INT. BOY’S BEDROOM 3
Ferris' parents, TOM and JOYCE BUELLER are standing at bedside. They're in their late forties, early fifties. Handsome, upper-middle class parents. They're both dressed for work.
Later, in the same introduction scene just a couple lines later, it says this:
FERRIS I'm okay, Mom. I feel perfectly...Oh, God! He's gripped by a seizure. His body stiffens and he chokes. **His older sister, JEANIE, walks into the room**. She's dressed for school. She's cute and stuck-up. A major pill.
Though both Ferris and Jeanie are described as eighteen years old.
Yes, but then it says she’s his older sister. So, it contradicts itself on the first page of the script.
Speaking of which, that guy’s dad turns 85 in a few months. He has not always seemed old (like in that thing with Jodie Foster), but he has seemed old for several decades.
How is that a contradiction? What if one is born, and, like, nine or ten or eleven months later, the other one is born?
I saw an account of the story’s background that says she’s his younger sister. None of that matters to me unless there’s a line actually used in the movie that clears this up. Not that it makes any difference to the movie, but the question of her relative age has to be answered based on what is said in the movie, not something proposed pre-production.
This copy of the script says that they are both eighteen:
Ferris is a senior. If he was born in the same year as Jeanie, that would put him born Mid to late September at the earliest. Most US schools have a September 1 cutoff for Kindergarten. Illinois is one the them. Unless Jeanie was left back, which doesn’t seem in her character, they can’t be in the same grade.
Personally, I believe they really weren’t thinking about it. She’s just “Sister/Antagonist” and the descriptions are just for character and motivation. Her resentment toward Ferris is more “younger brother gets away with stuff she couldn’t get away with” than older brother issues.
Yeah, I quoted that above. It then says she’s his older sister. I said that the script is of no help.
It’s possible for a person to have a sibling who is not a twin but who is the same age. If Jeanie was born on September 8th of one year and Ferris was born on August 12th of the next year, she would have been in the same grade as him. It’s possible for a person to have a sibling who’s just eleven months younger than that person. Anyway, they could be either twins or siblings less than a year apart.