Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze was a Texas-born movie actor whose background in ballet and gymnastics ironically gave him a physique well-suited for his roles as hunky love interest or macho action film hero. His early roles as the only slightly older patriarchal figure of his onscreen teenage families in films like “The Outsiders” (1983) and “Red Dawn” (1984) helped put the heartthrob on the map and on the cover of many a Tiger Beat fan magazine in the early 1980s. But it was only a few years before the teen became a man and it was in these more adult roles that the actor made his mark. He never surpassed