Some families create actors in the same way that some kitchens make bread—almost instinctively, as though the surroundings require it. That’s precisely what the Katz family is like. Joel Grey, an Oscar-winning actor and Tony Award-winning Cabaret emcee, wed actress Jo Wilder. The moment their daughter Jennifer Grey entered a dance floor across from Patrick Swayze, she became a cultural icon. James Katz, their son, went on to become a chef. And if you think about it long enough, it seems like the most intriguing choice anyone in that household has ever made.
As Joel Grey’s son, I grew up surrounded by American theater history. Born Joel Katz, the son of comedian Mickey Katz, Grey had a multi-decade career spanning Broadway, Hollywood, and television. James Katz was raised in a home where performance was not just acceptable but pervasive. In order to help Joel achieve his goals and create the kind of traditional family life Grey allegedly desired, his mother, Jo Wilder, gave up her own acting career. That sacrifice, which is openly described in Grey’s memoir, points to a place where personal compromise and artistic identity coexisted. After taking everything in, James might have quietly decided he wanted something different.
When the stage is already lit and ready, what attracts people to kitchens? It’s difficult to ignore the question of whether James Katz made a calculated decision or if cooking just came naturally to him in the same way that some things do—early, unanticipated, and explanation-free. He works as a chef, according to People magazine and other sources, but the specifics of his career are still mainly unknown. He is the son of Joel Grey, not the film preservationist James C. Katz or Cleveland’s James Katz of Fire Food and Drink. The silent one.
Here, there is a more general pattern that is worth observing. Children of highly visible parents tend to go in one of two directions: either they follow their parents’ light, or they move sideways into a more private and quiet environment.
The former was done by Jennifer Grey. The latter seems to have been accomplished by James Katz, who has established a career that keeps him off entertainment pages and away from the kind of breathless celebrity coverage associated with last names like Grey. His restraint reads less like shyness and more like a well-reasoned refusal in a field like cooking where personality and ego can be just as important as technique.
James is mentioned in Joel Grey’s 2015 memoir, Master of Ceremonies, with the kind of fleeting tenderness a parent uses when they know their child deserves privacy. He is the son of the chef. The less well-known sibling. The one whose father was a theatrical force and whose grandfather was Mickey Katz, but who appears to have concluded that none of that had to define the cuisine he prepares or the reputation he establishes in his career.
Honestly, there’s a refreshing quality to it. James Katz has managed to stay genuinely elusive in a media environment that constantly mines celebrity bloodlines for content. In the subtle manner of someone who merely chose their career over their life story, rather than mysteriously or dramatically. It’s unclear if he’s running a kitchen in secret, cooking in private, or doing something else entirely. The most Hollywood family in any room produced a person whose identity is based more on craft than ancestry, at least in public.
Of all the moves, that one may be the most theatrical.
