Memorial Page for Patrick Swayze (née Patrick Wayne Swayze)

Patrick Swayze (born 18 August 1952 in Houston, Texas; died 14 September 2009 in Los Angeles) was an American actor, singer and dancer. With roles such as dance instructor Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing and the deceased Sam Wheat in Ghost, he became one of the defining film stars of the late 1980s and early 1990s – an actor whose dance training gave his on-screen physicality a particular precision.

From ballet training to acting

Swayze grew up in Houston as the son of choreographer and dance instructor Patsy Swayze, who ran a well-regarded dance school there; his father, Jesse Wayne Swayze, worked as an engineering draftsman. A knee injury sustained playing football ended early athletic ambitions, and Swayze turned instead fully to dance. In 1972 he moved to New York to train professionally at the schools of the Harkness Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet. There he also met Lisa Niemi, a dance student of his mother's, whom he married on 12 June 1975 – a marriage that would last 34 years, until his death.

Breakthrough: Dirty Dancing and Ghost

After early film and television roles, including The Outsiders (1983) and Red Dawn (1984), Swayze achieved his international breakthrough on 21 August 1987 with Dirty Dancing: as dance instructor Johnny Castle, he brought his dance training directly to the screen and earned his first Golden Globe nomination. On 13 July 1990 came his greatest commercial success, Ghost – as the murdered Sam Wheat alongside Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, he starred in the highest-grossing film of 1990 and received a second Golden Globe nomination. In 1991 People magazine named him "Sexiest Man Alive." That same year, the surfing thriller Point Break alongside Keanu Reeves became another worldwide box-office success, and in 1995 a role as a drag queen in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar brought him a third Golden Globe nomination.

Illness and final years

In January 2008 Swayze was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, shortly after taking the lead role in the television series The Beast for A&E. He chose to continue filming despite the diagnosis and completed the show's first and only season. Patrick Swayze died on 14 September 2009, aged 57, in Los Angeles from the effects of his illness.

Swayze is remembered above all as the embodiment of a rare combination of dance precision, physical presence and emotional accessibility – an actor who filled roles that could, on paper, have read as pure action fare or pure sentiment with real skill and real vulnerability.