Patrick Wayne Swayze
(August 18, 1952 – September 14, 2009) Patrick Wayne Swayze was an American actor, dancer and singer-songwriter. He was best-known for his roles as romantic leading men in the films
Dirty Dancing and
Ghost and as Orry Main in the North and South television miniseries. He was named by People magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991.
Patrick Wayne Swayze was born in Houston, Texas, where his mother, Patsy, ran a dance school. At his primary school and Waltrip High School in the city, Patrick was teased for being a sissy when he made his way to dance lessons.
After school, Swayze went to New York to train as a dancer at Harkness Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet School. His first professional engagement was with Disney on Parade in 1978, and soon afterwards he joined the Broadway cast of the musical Grease.
His first film was the forgettable
Skatetown, USA (1979), an attempt to cash in on the roller-disco craze, in which Swayze played Ace, and he had a number of minor roles in television, including a part in an episode of M*A*S*H.
In 1984's
Red Dawn, Swayze took the lead as Jed, the head of a gang of teenagers who turn themselves into guerrilla fighters after a Russian invasion of America. The film, a kind of advertisement for the right to bear arms, was cited by The Guinness Book of Records as containing the greatest number of acts of violence in any movie.
After
Grandview, USA (1984), a dull comedy drama in which he played a driver in a demolition derby, Swayze appeared the following year in the television miniseries North and South, a civil war drama in which he gave one of his better performances.
Youngblood (1986) was a dire ice hockey movie in which he appeared with Rob Lowe and Keanu Reeves. In
Road House (1989), Swayze plays a philosophy graduate turned bouncer who manages to transform the fortunes of a seedy roadside bar. The film's obvious badness ensured it a kind of cult following.
After
Ghost Swayze played a Zen thug in
Point Break (1991), an action thriller about surfing bank-robbers, which also starred Keanu Reeves. This was perhaps the most successful period of his career. But though Swayze continued to act as steadily, almost all his subsequent films fared badly at the box office.
He played a doctor in India in
City of Joy (1992), and a positively alarming drag queen in
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar (1995), though he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance.
In 1996 Swayze fell from a horse and hit a tree. Both his legs were broken, and he suffered detached tendons in his shoulder. Swayze recovered, but took little work until 2000, when he co-starred in
Waking Up in Reno with Billy Bob Thornton and Charlize Theron, and in
Forever Lulu with Melanie Griffith.
In 2001 he had a part in the surreal
Donny Darko, and in 2004 took a cameo (as a dance instructor) in
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, a lacklustre sequel. That year he also played Allan Quatermain in a television film of King Solomon's Mines.
In 2003 he appeared in the Broadway production of
Chicago, and in 2006 he took on the role of Nathan Detroit in
Guys and Dolls in the West End.
His most recent films included
The Fox and the Hound 2, in which he provided the voice of an Alpine Dachsbracke; a comedy called
Christmas in Wonderland; and
Powder Blue, in which he plays the owner of a strip club in Los Angeles.
Most recently, Swayze starred in A&E network's "The Beast," which debuted in January. Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late January 2008, and underwent chemotherapy and other treatments at the Stanford University Medical Center. He agreed to take the starring role of an undercover FBI agent before his diagnosis. The network agreed to shoot an entire season of the show after Swayze responded well to cancer treatment.
"The Beast" was canceled in June because of Swayze's illness, after doctors told him the cancer had spread to his liver.
Off-screen, he was an avid conservationist who was moved by his time in Africa shooting
King Solomon's Mines. Swayze was married since 1975 to Lisa Niemi, a fellow dancer who took lessons with his mother; they met when he was 19 and she was 15. Lisa and Patrick did not have any children.
Swayze's publicist, Annett Wolf, confirmed that he had died of pancreatic cancer. Swayze died with his family at his side, twenty months after being diagnosed.
RIP
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