Elaine Hendrix’s Dancing with the Stars run is allowing her to defy what she previously thought was possible for herself. The actress, 54, best known for her role as Meredth Blake in The Parent Trap, originally began her performing career as a dancer, but everything changed after a car accident injury rendered those dancing dreams impossible. She pivoted to acting, but the dancing bug never quite fully went away, and now Elaine is returning to her original dream.
“I have a titanium joint in my right foot, so that renders half my foot unusable,” Elaine explained in the opening package before her Wicked Night performance on Tuesday. “Every week, my body shifts into a new pain spot, but I just don’t want to let it stop me.”
Elaine moved to Los Angeles in 1992 to begin her professional career as a “classically trained dancer in modern and contemporary jazz,” as she previously told HuffPost in 2016. “Very soon after moving here, I was riding my bike and got hit by a car and that changed everything for me, because after that dance became something that was very painful to do, so it just pushed me more in the direction of acting,” she said.
She added: “That’s when I stopped dancing professionally, but I never stopped dancing altogether. It’s just that whenever I dance I need to be prepared for the fact that I will be really sore and can’t quite do the things I used to do. But that’s okay. I believe that everything happens for a reason and it pushed me in this direction that completely worked out, thankfully.”
Earlier this season, Elaine opened up about how those injuries continue to linger as she’s pushing herself to compete on the reality ballroom dance competition. “It’s a roller coaster because I have very real injuries,” she told People. “So I have good days, and I have challenging days. The thing that we focus on is to do whatever I need to do to make sure show day is a good day.”
Wicked Night was certainly a good day in the DWTS judges’ eyes. Elaine’s standout contemporary performance with pro partner Alan Bersten to “Defying Gravity,” the most well-known song from Wicked, was a unanimous hit. All four judges — Wicked director Jon M. Chu joined Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli at the judges’ table Tuesday night as a guest judge — awarded Elaine a 9/10, adding up to a total of 36/40, tying for second place on the Wicked Night leaderboard.
© Disney/Eric McCandless“I just burst into tears just because you were so purely in this moment,” Carrie Ann said following the performance. “There are these moments that happen on this show that are magical — that no one will ever forget how it made them feel. … It was beauty, elegance and you just dug into my soul and I am so proud of you.”
© Getty Images“I’m so grateful,” Elaine said after receiving her scores. “I’m so grateful for this moment. I am 54, I am injured and I just did that!”
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