After a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer, actor Patrick Swayze died on Monday at his Los Angeles home, with his family by his side.
The 57-year-old was diagnosed with advanced stage four pancreatic cancer in January 2008. He continued to work, though, starring on the new A&E crime series "The Beast" as a hard-nosed, veteran FBI agent.
While the network reluctantly passed this summer on the show's second season, Swayze kept busy, working on a memoir with his wife, despite his declining health.
People will likely remember him most often as the romantic lead who swooped Jennifer Grey off her feet in Dirty Dancing, watched over Demi Moore in Ghost, and fought for love and honor in the mini-series "North and South."
Personally, I'll always think of him as the tough, but caring older brother in The Outsiders...
...the leader of a group of kids turned World War III freedom fighters in Red Dawn...
...and the streetwise tough in the short-lived Mod Squad-meets-The Warriors TV show, "Renegades."
To a young '80s tyke, Swayze was a larger-than-life hero up on the screen. While I'm sure it only helped boost his career when he started to appeal to all of his swooning lady fans, I always enjoyed it when he returned to his action roots in stuff like Roadhouse, Youngblood (playing a hockey mentor to former Outsiders sibling Rob Lowe) and the ultimate surfing-skydiving-bank-robbing epic, Point Break (co-starring Youngblood's hockey goalie-turned-megastar, Keanu Reeves).
Swayze was a lot of things: an action hero, a romantic leading man, an accomplished dancer, a strong athlete, and a fully capable movie star and actor. He was the guy that the girls wanted to be with, and the guys wanted to be. He was a renaissance man in the best sense of the word, and he lived his life to the fullest up until the very end – for that, we salute him, and only hope to do likewise.
