Patrick Swayze, who died today at 57, wasn’t the first choice for the male lead in Dirty Dancing, the BBC notes, but “his performance earned him award nominations and a place on bedroom walls of lovelorn teenage girls around the world.” He eschewed Hollywood’s scene—preferring his ranches—and its bed-hopping—he and Lisa Niemi were married 34 years. Swayze also wanted little to do with a pretty-boy image, he said: “It wouldn’t have been worth it if I had been stuck as the leading man or the dance guy.”
“Swayze was almost comically handsome,” Vanity Fair adds in its obituary, “a trait he made the most of in his romantic roles but also wasn’t afraid to make fun of from time to time. Who can forget his famous Chippendales dance on Saturday Night Live with the corpulent Chris Farley?” Adds admiring blogger Tyler Durden: “When I die my greatest hope is that it will be after a life well lived, with someone I love, and my final days marked with dignity.”
(More Patrick Swayze stories.)
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