PATRICK SWAYZE:PATRICK SWAYZE, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 57, was a leading man blessed with distinctive good looks and a dancer's physique.
He enjoyed staggering success in Reagan-Bush-era America thanks to two classic movie roles. In Dirty Dancing(1987), he was Johnny Castle, a summer-camp dance teacher from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in love with one of his pupils, Frances "Baby" Houseman, a teenage girl from a posh, uptight family, whose world is rocked by Johnny's steamy dance moves.
At the end of the movie, Johnny strides into the dance hall to find that she has been forced to sit demurely with her parents at a table well away from the action. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner!” he declares, and whisks her centre-stage for some spectacular choreography.
The image of the blonde princess emotionally liberated by the bad boy with the heart of gold was adored by movie audiences.
Three years later, in Ghost(1990), Swayze was Sam Wheat, a yuppie banker deeply in love with his ceramic-artist fiancee Molly, played by Demi Moore. Sam is killed by a mugger in the movie's sensational opening scene, but returns as a ghost to watch over the love of his life. It became America's favourite date movie.
After these movies, Swayze never quite progressed to the A-list, though he excelled as the charismatic surfer-thief in Kathryn Bigelow's 1991 Point Break, opposite Keanu Reeves. A workmanlike career unfolded, nevertheless, and he reportedly turned down an offer of $7 million to appear in a Dirty Dancingsequel; when criticised for his choice of film roles, said that he was "fed up with that Hollywood blockbuster mentality".
Typecasting, and a battle with alcoholism, hampered any rise to the top. He was the decent American expatriate in Calcutta in Roland Joffe's City of Joy(1992), and the wacky drag artist in Beeban Kidron's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar(1995).
It wasn't until his scene-stealing turn in Donnie Darko(2001), in which he played the sinister motivational speaker Jim Cunningham, that Swayze's career found a new act. His looks were now those of a character actor, and a new generation responded to his muscular presence and direct address to the camera.
Swayze was born in Houston, Texas. His mother, Patsy, was a choreographer with the Houston Jazz and Ballet Company, and she drove Patrick hard as a boy towards a career in dance – and specifically in ballet. Not an easy choice for a young Texan male. Swayze became a sports star in high school and got an athletics scholarship to Houston’s San Jacinto College.
After graduating, he moved to New York City, where he became the principal dancer at the Eliot Feld ballet company, but recurrent injuries compelled a strategic move into the theatre. On Broadway, he tore up the stage as Danny Zuko in Grease.
His big break came in the teen drama The Outsiders(1983), the movie that also launched Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe. His breakthrough in Dirty Dancingplayed perfectly to Swayze's strengths: dancing, masculinity, sensuality.
After Ghost, Peoplemagazine voted him one of the "sexiest people alive".
After that, things took a turn for the worse. His personal life was troubled: deeply affected by his father's death from a heart attack and his sister's suicide in 1994, Swayze repeatedly relapsed into alcoholism. He broke both legs in a horse-riding stunt in 1996 filming the HBO movie Letters from a Killer, which caused career stagnation and depression.
In 2008, soon after he had filmed a pilot for a television show, The Beast, in which he was to star as an FBI agent, Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
His wife, the actor and dancer Lisa Niemi, his childhood sweetheart from Houston, whom he married in 1975 survives him.
He described her as "the smartest chick I'd ever met" and cited her as the inspiration for the song She's Like the Wind, which he co-wrote and which featured on the Dirty Dancingsoundtrack.
Patrick Wayne Swayze: born August 18th, 1952; died September 14th, 2009