Crowd Darling Patrick Swayze: His loved ones were dying and he had suffered from addiction and mental illness all his life

This Hollywood legend died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 57. Throughout his life, he had coped with the pain of an old knee injury. Among other things, this injury also ended his dreams of a career in ballet or sports. During his life, he also struggled with alcohol addiction and severe depression.

“There are a lot of men who play heroes or tough guys in movies, but in short, no one cares as much about them as they do about Patrick. This is because you can clearly see his vulnerability on the screen. You can see it in his eyes,“ said producer Jerry Zucker about Patrick, who worked with him on Ghost. “You can simply feel what he’s afraid of, it’s probably what we’re all afraid of. It simply draws the audience to him, it made him a completely unique actor. “

An injury that ruined his career

Patrick was raised in the US state of Texas by Patsy’s mother, who had her own dance school, the Houston Jazz and Ballet Company. Little Patrick himself came to it. At school, his mother relied on an absolutely perfect performance of all dance steps, she did not accept anything else.

“His mother kept telling him that he simply had to be perfect. I don’t think it left him all his life then. “ revealed about the actor’s friend Frank Whiteley.

Later, he excelled not only in ballet, thanks to his mother’s training, but also in sports. His main passion was football, he was even supposed to receive a football scholarship. At the age of 18, however, he suffered a very serious knee injury. The doctors told him then that he would probably never be able to walk normally again.

But Patrick didn’t give up so easily, took it in his head that he would simply walk as before, and in the end he did it. His beloved dance discipline helped him in rehabilitation.

Death of a father

He started his ballet career at the age of 23, but then got an infection on that previously injured knee. Unfortunately, she was so serious that it meant she had to leave her ballet dream.

The actor then moved to Los Angeles, USA, where he impressed with his dance steps. His father died at the same time that his television career began in The Renegades. His father died in 1982 at the age of 57, at the same age as Patrick later.

Unfortunately, he began to cope with his father’s death with alcohol. That was the moment when his addiction began, which he then struggled with for the rest of his life.

Abortion

Patrick’s stellar fame began with Sinful Dance (1987) and continued as a role in Ghost, starring Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. It was without debate the most successful period of his acting career.

Unfortunately, another tragedy met him with his misfortune at that time. He and his wife were expecting a baby at the time, but his wife Lisa miscarried unexpectedly.

“I was so excited to hear my child’s heartbeat, but it was dead.” he confided in his autobiography. „I almost didn’t make it. My wife and I cried all night. “

After that, the actor fell even further into his alcohol addiction. He even started drinking so much that he fainted several times on various shoots. In the mid-1990s, he ended up in a rehabilitation center due to his addiction.

Suicide sister

Unfortunately, rehabilitation only helped him for a while. In 1994, another tragedy brought him to his knees. His younger sister Vicky took her own life. In some miraculous way, he managed to overcome that without alcohol. Unfortunately, three years later, he fell off his horse and broke both legs. That was too much for him, so his addiction conquered him again.

Towards the end of his life, he found partial comfort in working with horses, but at that time he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died shortly afterwards in 2008.

Source: The Sun

WHERE NOW: World virtuoso Štěpán Rak: I didn’t play the guitar at all, I only studied it because of the girls.

– .