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Patrick Swayze dies at 57

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090915/ap_en_...s_obit_swayze_1

 

LOS ANGELES – Patrick Swayze has died after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

 

Swayze's publicist Annett Wolf says the 57-year-old "Dirty Dancing" actor died Monday with family at his side. He came forward about his illness last spring, but continued working as he underwent treatments.

 

It was 1987 when Swayze became a star with his performance in "Dirty Dancing," a coming-of-age story set in a Catskills resort. The 1990 film "Ghost" cemented his status as a screen favorite.

 

Swayze played a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee through a spirit played by Whoopi Goldberg.

 

He kept on working even after it was disclosed in March 2008 that he had a particularly deadly form of cancer. He starred in "The Beast," an A&E drama series, and said he and his wife were working on a memoir.

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man.....this kinda blows. i can remember when i was about 3 or 5 when i first saw Dirty Dancing. since then i liked some of his other movies like "Ghost" "Next Of Kin" "Point Break"....which i was just watching two days ago, and even his role in MASH. All I can say he will be missed. Funny thing is I have one song from him stuck in my head. Most of you should know what it is B).

Edited by TJ

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Wikipedia

It was Swayze's performance in 1990's "Ghost" that showed his vulnerable, sensitive side. He starred as a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee (Demi Moore) — with great frustration and longing — through a psychic played by Whoopi Goldberg. Swayze said at the time that he fought for the role of Sam Wheat (director Jerry Zucker wanted Kevin Kline) but once he went in for an audition and read six scenes, he got it.

 

Why did he want the part so badly? "It made me cry four or five times," he said of Bruce Joel Rubin's Oscar-winning script in an AP interview. "Ghost" provided yet another indelible musical moment: Swayze and Moore sensually molding pottery together to the strains of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody."

 

It also earned a best-picture nomination and a supporting-actress Oscar for Goldberg, who said she wouldn't have won if it weren't for Swayze. "When I won my Academy Award, the only person I really thanked was Patrick," Goldberg said in March 2008 on the ABC daytime talk show "The View."

 

Swayze himself earned three Golden Globe nominations, for "Dirty Dancing," "Ghost" and 1995's "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar," which further allowed him to toy with his masculine image. The role called for him to play a drag queen on a cross-country road trip alongside Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo. His heartthrob status almost kept him from being considered for the role of Vida Boheme. But he transformed himself so completely that when his screen test was sent to Steven Spielberg, whose Amblin pictures produced "To Wong Foo," Spielberg didn't recognize him.

 

Among his earlier films, Swayze was part of the star-studded lineup of up-and-comers in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders," alongside Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. Swayze played Darrel "Dary" Curtis, the oldest of three wayward brothers — and essentially the father figure — in a poor family in small-town Oklahoma.

 

Other '80s films included "Red Dawn," "Grandview U.S.A." (for which he also provided choreography) and "Youngblood," once more with Lowe, as Canadian hockey teammates.

 

Swayze was born in 1952 in Houston, the son of Jesse Swayze and choreographer Patsy Swayze, whose films include "Urban Cowboy."

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man.....this kinda blows. i can remember when i was about 3 or 5 when i first saw Dirty Dancing. since then i liked some of his other movies like "Ghost" "Next Of Kin" "Point Break"....which i was just watching two days ago, and even his role in MASH. All I can say he will be missed. Funny thing is I have one song from him stuck in my head. Most of you should know what it is B).

I worked at the movies when Dirty Dancing came out, I probably watched the movie 50 to 100 times while it was out that summer (1987).

 

Watch some of his early stuff too, "The Outsiders" and "Red Dawn" were good.

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Nobody has mentioned Patrick Swayze's best movie Road House

 

R.I.P. Dalton aka Patrick Swayze

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Nobody has mentioned Patrick Swayze's best movie Road House

 

R.I.P. Dalton aka Patrick Swayze

You know, I don't think I've ever watched it all the way through. In fact I'd be hard pressed to think of any time I've seen more than a few minutes of it.

 

I think the earliest thing I've seen him, which I'm sure Mandy will remember too is an episode of M*A*S*H where he plays a wounded soldier that they discover has leukemia.

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I first remember the oohing and ahhing when he starred in the tv mini series North and South -

 

And how can anyone forget - To Wong Foo - Thanks for Everything - Love Julie Newmar?

 

Yes, it is sad.

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