Patrick Wayne Swayze ( ;
August 18, 1952 – September 14, 2009) 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.
Swayze was diagnosed with
pancreatic
cancer in early
2008. He continued acting
until 2009, when he became too ill to do so. Later the same year he
died from the disease.
Early life
Patrick
Swayze was born on August 18, 1952 in Houston
, Texas, the
second child of Patricia "Patsy" Yvonne Helen (née Karnes; born
1927), a choreographer, dance
instructor, and dancer, and Jesse Wayne Swayze (1925–1982), an
engineering draftsman. He had two younger brothers, actor
Don Swayze (born 1958) and Sean Kyle
(born 1962), and two sisters, Vickie Lynn (1949–1994) and Bambi
(who was adopted). Swayze was a sixth cousin once removed of
commentator
John Cameron Swayze,
and a relative of noted
Texas
Revolution soldier
Henry
Karnes.
Until the
age of twenty, Swayze lived in the Oak Forest neighborhood of
Houston, where he attended St. Rose of
Lima Catholic School, Oak Forest Elementary School, Black
Middle School, and Waltrip High School
. During this time, he also pursued multiple
artistic and athletic skills, such as
ice
skating,
classical ballet, and
acting in school plays. He played football for his high school and
was hoping to receive a football scholarship to college until a
knee injury ended his career. He studied gymnastics at nearby
San Jacinto College for two
years.
In 1972, he moved to New York City to complete his formal dance
training at the
Harkness Ballet and
Joffrey ballet schools.
Career
Swayze's first professional appearance was as a dancer for
Disney on Parade.
He starred as a
replacement for Danny Zuko in the
long-running Broadway
production
of Grease before his début
film role as "Ace" in Skatetown,
U.S.A.. He appeared as Pvt. Sturgis in the
M*A*S*H episode
"
Blood Brothers" and had a
brief stint in 1982 on a short lived TV series
The Renegades playing a gang leader named
Bandit. Swayze became known to the film industry after appearing in
The Outsiders as the
older brother of
C. Thomas Howell and
Rob
Lowe. Swayze, Howell, and Howell's friend
Darren Dalton reunited in
Red Dawn the next year, and Lowe and Swayze
reunited in
Youngblood. He was considered a
member of the
Brat Pack. His
first major success was in the 1985 television miniseries
North and
South, which was set during the American Civil War.
Swayze's breakthrough role came with his performance as dance
instructor Johnny Castle in the 1987 film
Dirty Dancing, alongside his
Red Dawn co-star,
Jennifer Grey.
Dirty Dancing, a
coming of age story set to film was a
low-budget project that was intended to be shown in theaters for
one weekend only and then go
straight
to video, but it became a surprise hit and achieved massive
international success. It was the first film to sell one million
copies on video, and as of 2007, has earned over $300 million
worldwide and spawned several alternate versions, ranging from a
television series to stage productions to a computer game. Swayze
received a
Golden Globe Award
nomination for the role and also sang one of the songs on the
soundtrack, "
She's Like the
Wind," which he had originally co-written with Stacy Widelitz
for the film
Grandview,
U.S.A. The song became a top ten hit and has been
covered by other artists.
After
Dirty Dancing, Swayze found himself heavily typecast
and appeared in several flops, of which
Road House was the most
successful. His biggest hit came in 1990, when he starred in
Ghost, with
Demi Moore and
Whoopi
Goldberg. In 1991, he starred alongside
Youngblood
cast mate
Keanu Reeves in another major
action hit,
Point Break, and
was also chosen by
People
magazine as that year's "Sexiest Man Alive."
Swayze was
seriously injured in 1998 while filming HBO's Letters from a Killer near
Ione
, California
when he fell from a horse and hit a tree. Both of his legs
were broken and he suffered four detached tendons in his shoulder.
Filming was suspended for two months, but the film aired in 1999.
Swayze recovered from his injuries, but he had trouble resuming his
career 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 appeared in
Donnie
Darko, where he played a motivational speaker and closet
pedophile, and in 2004, he played Allan Quatermain in
King Solomon's Mines.
He also had a
cameo appearance in
the
Dirty Dancing sequel,
Dirty Dancing: Havana
Nights as an unnamed dance instructor.
Swayze
made his West End
theatre
début in the musical Guys and Dolls as Nathan Detroit on July
27, 2006, alongside Neil Jerzak, and remained in the role until
November 25, 2006. His previous appearances on the Broadway
stage had included productions of
Goodtime Charley (1975) and
Chicago (2003).
In 2007, Swayze starred in the film
Christmas in Wonderland. Swayze
played an aging rock star in
Powder Blue, co-starring his younger
brother
Don in their first film together.
Swayze
starred in the A&E FBI
drama
The Beast,
filmed in Chicago, as FBI Agent Charles Barker.
Personal life
Swayze was married to
Lisa Niemi from
June 12, 1975 until his death. The couple first met in 1970 when
Swayze was 18 years old. Niemi, 14 years old at the time, was
taking dance lessons from Swayze's mother. Swayze and Niemi had no
children.
As a reaction to his father's death at age 57 from a
heart attack in 1982, Swayze began to
drink heavily. His sister Vicky committed
suicide by
overdose in 1994,
leading him to seek treatment for
alcoholism.
After initial recovery, he temporarily
withdrew from show business, retreating to his ranches in
California and Las Vegas
, New
Mexico
, to breed Arabian
horses. His best-known horse was
Tammen, a chestnut Arabian stallion. Swayze was a
former Scientologist.
Swayze,
was a licensed pilot with an instrument rating, made the news on June
1, 2000, while flying with his dogs in his twin-engine Cessna from Van Nuys
, California to Las Vegas. His plane developed a
pressurization problem over northern Arizona
, causing Swayze to make a precautionary landing on
a dirt road in a housing complex in Prescott
Valley
. The plane's right wing struck a light pole
that he hadn't seen from the air, but Swayze was unharmed. He
locked up the cockpit, left it parked in the subdivision, and
obtained a ride (with his dogs) from a passing vehicle, allegedly
in order to telephone the authorities. According to the police
report, witnesses said that Swayze appeared to be extremely
intoxicated and asked for help to remove evidence (including an
open bottle of wine and a 30-pack of beer) from the crash site. He
made himself unavailable to police for several hours. It was later
determined that the alcohol in question was not in the cabin but
stored in external storage compartments inaccessible in flight and
that the probable cause of the accident was Swayze's physical
impairment due to the cumulative effects of
carbon monoxide from engine exhaust
by-products, carbon monoxide from heavy tobacco use, and the loss
of an undetermined amount of cabin pressurization.
Illness and death
Swayze was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer in late January 2008, and underwent chemotherapy and treatment with an experimental drug Vatalanib to cut off the blood supply to the tumor at the Stanford University Medical Center
. On March 5, 2008, a Reuters article reported that Swayze "has a very limited amount of disease, and he appears to be responding well to treatment thus far." Swayze's doctor confirmed that the actor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but insisted he was not as close to death as reports suggest. Despite repeated tabloid claims that his death was imminent, Swayze continued to actively pursue his career. Specifically, Swayze was diagnosed with a type of pancreatic tumor called intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm.
In early May 2008, it was widely reported in a number of tabloids
that Swayze had undergone surgery to remove part of his stomach
after the spread of the cancer and that he had rewritten his will,
transferring his property to his wife. In a statement made on May
28, Swayze said that he continued to respond well to treatment at
Stanford University Medical Center. In late May 2008, he was seen
at a
Los Angeles Lakers
basketball game, his first public appearance since his diagnosis.
In 2008 Swayze was treated with
Cyberknife radiotherapy cancer treatment.
In late July 2008, six months after reportedly being given just
weeks to live by medical experts, Swayze was asked by reporter in
Los Angeles airport about this health. He replied, "I'm cooking.
I'm a miracle dude. I don't know why".
Swayze appeared on the
ABC,
NBC,
and
CBS simulcast of
Stand Up to Cancer in
September 2008, to appeal to the general public for donations for
the initiative. Swayze said to a standing ovation "I dream that the
word 'cure' will no longer be followed by the words 'it's
impossible'. Together, we can make a world where cancer no longer
means living with fear, without hope, or worse". After the show
ended, Swayze remained on-stage and talked to other cancer
patients; executive producer
Laura
Ziskin said, "He said a beautiful thing: 'I'm just an
individual living with cancer'. That's how he wants to be thought
of. He's in a fight, but he's a fighter". In late 2008, Swayze
denied claims made by tabloids that the cancer had spread to his
liver. Swayze told
Barbara Walters
in January 2009 that he wanted the media to report that he was
"kicking it".
When Barbara Walters asked him if he was using any holistic or
alternative methods of
treatment besides the chemotherapy, Swayze admitted to using some
Chinese herbs, but not much. He then voiced his opposition to
alternative therapy, as noted by
ABC News
journalist Joseph Brownstein:
- Because of the grim prognosis, many patients turn to
alternative therapies without scientific evidence behind them.
Swayze did not.
- : "That's one thing I'm not gonna do, is chase, is chase
staying alive. I'm not, you know, you'll spend so much time chasing
staying alive you won't live, you know? I wanna live. If anybody
had that cure out there like so many people swear to me they do,
you'd be two things: you'd be very rich, and you'd be very famous.
Otherwise, shut up," he told Barbara Walters in an interview
that aired in January of this year.
- Swayze's feelings may be correct, according to a study
released last month in the Journal of Clinical
Oncology. That study—from Columbia University Medical
Center—compared standard pancreatic cancer care, including the
chemotherapy drug gemcitabine, with a popular alternative therapy
known as the Gonzalez
regimen. Researchers found that patients on the
alternative regimen had a median survival time of a little over 4
months, while patients taking the standard of care regimen survived
for a median of 14 months.
His last role was the lead in an
A&E TV series,
The Beast, which premiered
on January 15, 2009. Owing to a prolonged decline in health, Swayze
was unable to promote the series, and on June 15, 2009,
Entertainment Tonight
reported that the show had been cancelled. In an interview with
Barbara Walters which aired in
January 2009, Swayze admitted that he had a "tiny little mass" in
his liver. On January 9, 2009, Swayze was hospitalized with
pneumonia. The pneumonia was said to be a complication of
chemotherapy treatments for Swayze's cancer. On January 16, he was
released from the hospital to rest at home with his wife. On April
19, 2009, doctors informed Swayze that the cancer had again
metastasized to his liver. Swayze stated
that his
chain smoking probably "had
something to do with" the development of his disease. Photos taken
of a gaunt Swayze in the months before his death showed him
continuing to smoke.
Swayze died "with family at his side" on September 14, 2009, at age
57, 20 months after being diagnosed. Swayze's publicist, Annett
Wolf, confirmed to CNN that he had died of pancreatic cancer. He
was
cremated and his ashes scattered over
his New Mexico ranch.
Filmography
References
- 'Dirty Dancing' star Patrick Swayze at 57
- [1]
- Biography at Don Swayze's Official Site.
- Distinguished Houston Independent School District
Alumni. Retrieved on 2009-04-20.
- " F.M. Black Middle School, Houston, Texas - General
Information. Retrieved on 2009-04-20.
- Grease, Replacement Cast at Internet Broadway Database
- M*A*S*H (episode #9.18, April 6, 1981) at the
Internet Movie Database.
- The Renegades (TV series) at Internet Movie
Database.
- (in German) Patrick Swayze - Biografie auf Gala.de
- Dirty Dancing, The E! True Hollywood
Story, first aired 2000-09-03
- Goodtime Charley Opening Night Cast at
Internet Broadway Database.
- Chicago Replacement Cast at Internet Broadway Database.
- (Swayze on Stand Up to Cancer).
- Patrick Swayze Calls Tabloid Reports on Condition
"Lies"" TV Guide. December 2, 2008. Retrieved on
2008-12-03.
- Joseph Brownstein, Did Swayze's Dancing Help in Cancer Battle?
ABC News Medical
Unit, Sept. 16, 2009
- Santos, Kristin Dos; Godwin, Jennifer (9 Jan. 2009) "Patrick Swayze Hospitalized With Pneumonia".
|E! Entertainment.
- King, Tim (April 19, 2009). Patrick Swayze Gravely Ill But Very Much Alive
Salem (Oregon) News. 2009-04-19.
- Lemire, Christie. "'Dirty Dancing' star Patrick Swayze at 57".
Seattle Times. 2009-09-14.
- "US film star Patrick Swayze dies." BBC.
2009-09-15.
- "Patrick Swayze dies of cancer at 57". CNN.com.
2009-09-14.
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