Few ballet dancers become Hollywood heart-throbs, but Patrick Swayze’s co-starring role as the eponymous Ghost alongside Demi Moore in 1990 earned him an adoring legion of fans. The following year People magazine declared him to be the “sexiest man alive”.
The hit movie was Swayze’s second surprise box office smash - 1987’s low-budget Dirty Dancing made him a star and became the first film to sell one million copies on video.
The son of an engineer father and choreographer mother Patsy Kearns, he was born on August 18, 1952, in Houston, Texas, and trained at the Harkness and Joffrey ballet schools in New York.
His professional debut was as a dancer for Disney on Parade and he first attracted attention in 1978 as Danny Zuko in the long-running Broadway revival of Grease. Although film and American television dominated his career, he returned to Broadway in the short-lived musical Goodtime Charley in 1975 and, in 2003, as Billy Flynn in Chicago. His only UK stage appearance was as Nathan Detroit in 2006 at the Piccadilly Theatre.
Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early 2008, Swayze continued acting until 2009, starring in the US television crime series The Beast. He died on September 14, aged 57, and is survived by his wife Lisa, whom he married in 1975.
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