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The Untold Truth Of Patrick Swayze

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Patrick Swayze spent two decades convincing Hollywood he was more than just a pretty face, and it took a pancreatic cancer diagnosis to prove exactly how tough he really was.

Long before he was slow-dancing with Jennifer Grey or shaping clay alongside Demi Moore, Swayze was a working dancer with a bad knee and a carpentry business on the side. His path to becoming People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1991 ran through Broadway, a remodeled Hollywood kitchen, and a family history of tragedy that shadowed him even at the height of his fame.

• Swayze took over the lead role of Danny Zuko from John Travolta in the Broadway production of “Grease” before chronic knee injuries pushed him toward full-time film acting.
• He and wife Lisa Niemi ran a Los Angeles carpentry company called Nepotism, Inc., which remodeled actress Jaclyn Smith’s kitchen before “The Outsiders” made him a star.
• Diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer in January 2008, Swayze finished filming all 13 episodes of A&E’s “The Beast” without using pain medication that would dull his performance, before dying of the disease on September 14, 2009, at age 57.

A Dancer First, an Actor Second

Swayze was born August 18, 1952, in Houston, Texas, and grew up under the direct instruction of his mother, choreographer Patsy Swayze. Dance came first — he performed as Prince Charming in the touring ice show “Disney on Parade” — and acting came later, almost as an accident of circumstance once his body stopped cooperating with his original career plan.

That Broadway run as Danny Zuko, stepping into a role Travolta had already made famous, showed off the range that would later define his film work. But it was chronic knee trouble that eventually forced the pivot away from dance-heavy stage work and toward the screen, where he could still move but didn’t have to carry a full production eight shows a week.

Nepotism, Inc. and the Long Climb

Before “The Outsiders” hit theaters in 1983, Swayze wasn’t paying the bills with acting gigs. He and Lisa Niemi — whom he met as a teenager in dance class and married in 1975 — ran a carpentry and home-remodeling firm in Los Angeles they called Nepotism, Inc. Among their clients was actress Jaclyn Smith, whose kitchen the couple remodeled while Swayze was still chasing his break.

That break arrived in a string of hits that made him one of the most bankable stars of his era: “The Outsiders” in 1983, “Dirty Dancing” in 1987, and “Ghost” in 1990. The “Ghost” casting itself almost didn’t happen — director Jerry Zucker originally had doubts about handing a tender romantic lead to an actor known for his tough-guy action roles. The film went on to become one of the defining hits of 1990, and by 1991 People had crowned Swayze its Sexiest Man Alive.

The Hidden Reality of Fame

Behind the box-office numbers, Swayze was carrying real grief. His father, Jesse, died suddenly in 1982, and his sister Vicky took her own life in 1994. Both losses fed into severe bouts of alcoholism that Swayze battled largely out of public view, even as his career kept producing hits.

Diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer in January 2008, Swayze finished all 13 episodes of “The Beast” without using pain medication that would have dulled his performance.

By the late 1990s, Swayze stepped away from Hollywood entirely, retreating to his ranches in California and New Mexico to work through rehab and breed Arabian horses. It was a deliberate hiatus from the industry that had made him famous, and one that got little attention compared to his film work.

The Final Fight

Swayze’s January 2008 diagnosis of Stage IV pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest and hardest-to-treat forms of the disease — would have ended most careers on the spot. Instead, he went back to work, completing all 13 episodes of A&E’s “The Beast” while refusing pain medication strong enough to compromise his performance. It’s the kind of detail that explains why colleagues and fans alike talked about his discipline as much as his talent.

He died of the disease on September 14, 2009, at age 57. For readers who want more on how other stars have faced down career-altering health battles and family strain in the public eye, InfoSearched’s breakdown of LL Cool J’s toughest chapters and its look at the untold truth of Lin-Manuel Miranda cover similar ground on what fame costs behind the scenes.

Swayze shot “The Beast” on a full 13-episode order for A&E in 2008 and 2009, working through chemotherapy sessions between takes rather than pushing the show into hiatus. That’s the detail people who worked with him kept coming back to — not the “Sexiest Man Alive” title, not the box office numbers from “Ghost,” but the fact that he simply refused to stop working until the disease finally did.