Dirty Dancing is one of the most well-known films of all time. Patrick Swayze (Johnny Castle) and Jennifer Grey (Frances “Baby” Houseman) feature in this 1987 romantic drama about a young girl who falls in love with a camp dancing instructor while on vacation in the Catskills with her family.

Despite her father’s opposition, the two fall in love when they are put together for a dance performance.  Who can forget Baby’s victorious last dance in front of her family and a big crowd, when she finally perfects the lift they’d trained all movie long?

Baby and her dancing instructor Johnny had great chemistry on-screen. But things weren’t quite that friendly behind the scenes.

It all started when the two collaborated on another project. Swayze and Grey met on the set of Red Dawn, and that’s when their relationship soured.

They were youths who formed a guerilla army after World War III erupted in the United States. To get into character, the entire cast had to go through an eight-week military training camp before filming. According to reports, Swayze fully dug into his written part as a brave leader and went the entire eight weeks without breaking character.

This is when Grey and Swayze’s feud began: he was supposedly ordering everyone about, and she couldn’t bear him.

Part of it was due to age, and part was due to contrasting personality types. Grey was eight years younger than Swayze and approached acting in a different way.

Dirty Dancing producer Linda Gottlieb told the Huffington Post, “He felt like she was a wimp.”

“She was genuine, naïve; you would do a take eight times and Jennifer would do it differently every time. Patrick was a pro; he would deliver the same thing again and again. She would cry easily, she was emotional and he sort of made fun of her. He was a macho guy.”

Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey in ‘Dirty Dancing’ | Moviepix/Getty Images

After witnessing all of this, Swayze formed an opinion about his co-star.

The actor, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2009, wrote about his time with Grey in his book, The Time of My Life.

According to The Telegraph, he said, “She seemed particularly emotional, sometimes bursting into tears if someone criticized her. Other times, she slipped into silly moods, forcing us to do scenes over and over again when she’d start laughing.” Apparently, he “didn’t have a whole lot of patience for doing multiple retakes.”

A few years later, Grey was given the role in Dirty Dancing and went through a series of screen tests with several performers. Grey was apprehensive about performing a screen test with Swayze following their past experience when they offered her an audition. They did, however, record a rehearsal dance routine in which Swayze raised her over his head, and the chemistry between the two was unmistakable.

In his autobiography, Swayze discusses the screen test: “I lifted her, she posed beautifully, and I lowered her slowly to the ground, with our eyes locked on each other. It was a lovely moment, and very sexy. The room was absolutely silent — everyone was just staring at us.”

Johnny and Baby’s passionate dance moments, particularly a hot practice session paired to the song “Hungry Eyes,” sizzled with sexual tension and have only grown more memorable with time. Fans may be surprised to hear that the remarkable connection between the film’s actors was nothing more than a polished performance.

According to choreographer Kenny Ortega, he enjoyed the fact that the stars didn’t get along. “Both of them brought so much every day,” he said to The Delite. “Sometimes, it was conflict; sometimes it was love. There was something there between the two of them that was unexplainable. They were human fireworks.”

Irritation or not, it’s difficult to imagine anyone other than Swayze and Grey in these great movie roles.

Grey has recently opened up about her time working with Swayze. They had a lot of tension and didn’t get along, she says, but that’s what contributed to their fiery on-screen chemistry.

“The thing is that I believe tension is much hotter-looking than just love. And I think there was a very complex dynamic between Patrick and myself for the whole movie,” Grey said. “Whatever our issues were, we had them, but they weren’t talked about.”

Grey has never spoken ill of her former co-star since the film’s debut more than three decades ago. In fact, she credits him with giving her the courage to perform daring dancing maneuvers. Grey described him as “really strong and very protective and his heart was very much in it.”

“He smelled really good, his skin was really nice,” she continued.