Swayze's Never-Ending Love Affair ; Adored by Women, Actor Patrick Swayze Only Ever Had Eyes for the Wife He Met When She Was 14, Who Was Holding His Hand When He Died After a Magnificently Heroic Two-Year Battle Against Cancer ...

Summary

---

HE SAID that he wanted to die like a cowboy, with his boots on. And Patrick Swayze, the Hollywood leading man who grew up as a ballet dancer in Texas, was born to a certain sort of toughness - in striking contrast to his romantic lead-role in Dirty Dancing, which made him globally famous.

His hobbies, until his illness, were strictly macho: riding bulls, racing cars, skydiving and taming horses. He survived crashing his plane in the desert and a serious fall from a horse which temporarily paralysed him from the waist down.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Swayze's Never-Ending Love Affair ; Adored by Women, Actor Patrick Swayze Only Ever Had Eyes for the Wife He Met When She Was 14, Who Was Holding His Hand When He Died After a Magnificently Heroic Two-Year Battle Against Cancer ...

To this high-risk list of pastimes one can add an addiction to alcohol, for which he spent a period in rehab, and a spell of cocaine use. The other hazard, of course, was his 60-a-day cigarette habit. To Swayze, whose father was a genuine cowboy, smoking was 'the last masculine ritual'.

He refused to quit even when diagnosed with cancer. Especially, as he said with a wry laugh, he had been told he only had 'five minutes to live' anyway. Diagno...

See the full content of this document

---