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| Handsome, graceful, and athletic, Patrick Swayze hit the peak of his career during the late '80s as the star of such blockbusters as Dirty Dancing and Ghost. Unfortunately, thanks to what can only be called erratic movie choices, Swayze's star grew dimmer throughout the next decade, although it occasionally brightened with the success of such films as To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. Before turning to acting, Swayze, who was born in Houston on August 18, 1952, focused his talents on dancing. The son of dancer/choreographer Patsy Swayze, he was a professional dancer who trained with two prestigious dance troupes, the Harkness Ballet and Joffrey Ballet, and was the principal dancer in the Eliot Feld company. In high school, Swayze was a talented football player and gymnast and won an athletic scholarship to college. When he made it to New York to start his professional career, however, it was recurring knee problems from an old football injury that turned Swayze toward acting. The actor got his first big break playing Danny in the Broadway version of Grease. His stage success led him to Hollywood, where he made his film debut portraying a thug in the amiably trashy Skatetown, U.S.A. (1979). After his debut, Swayze went on to play supporting roles on various TV series and in made-for-television movies, all of which usually cast him as a teenager and/or juvenile delinquent. One exception was his guest appearance on the long-running series M*A*S*H, which featured him in a memorable performance as a soldier dying of leukemia. Along with this stint, some of his best television work came courtesy of the 1985 miniseries North and South and its sequel the following year. In 1983, Swayze joined fellow fledgling '80s stars Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, and Emilio Estevez in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, and while the classic coming-of-age film boosted his career, the actor did not have his true breakthrough until he starred opposite Jennifer Grey in the sleeper smash hit Dirty Dancing (1987). Although all of the dancing that the film required severely exacerbated Swayze's old knee injury and effectively forced him to stop dancing, the film rewarded him with bona fide heartthrob status and established him as one of the late-'80s new screen icons. Swayze's next few films were of uneven quality (e.g. Roadhouse), but in 1990, the actor again struck gold starring opposite Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, a romantic drama that proved to be the highest-grossing film of the year. He found more success the following year with a starring role as a surfing guru/bankrobber opposite G-man Keanu Reeves in Point Break, and had a memorable dramatic turn as a doctor who moves to Calcutta in Roland Joffe's City of Joy (1992). Swayze's subsequent film appearances throughout the 1990s were sporadic, and aside from the publicity surrounding his starring role as a wise 'n' feisty drag queen opposite Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, he remained out of the limelight. He resurfaced in 2000 as one of the stars of Wakin' Up in Reno, a comedy about two white trash couples (Swayze and Charlize Theron and Billy Bob Thornton and Natasha Richardson) who journey from Arkansas to Reno to see a monster truck rally. When not acting, Swayze spends time on his Texas horse ranch with his wife, Lisa Niemi, who is also a dancer. |
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