Patrick Swayze interview 1988"},"lengthSeconds":"878","ownerProfileUrl":"http://www.youtube.com/user

what is it that has made people come back to see him in this movie over and over again today

patrick

swayze

has every reason to be sitting high in the saddle after years of fighting this 35 year old texan has become a popular property in Hollywood and it all happened with some dirty dancing that blew up on the screen and one of the biggest movies this year that bought Johnny Castle, a dance instructor who was socially awkward but physically graceful and his dance sequences with the co-star Jennifer Gray created a nationwide sensation. the style was pure jean kelly the sexiness was pure

patrick

swayze

the dirty dancing left audiences wondering where this actor came from and where the hell did he learn to dance so the answer is he didn't start out as an actor at the time he could walk patrick swayze was taking lessons in his hometown of Houston his mother was a dance instructor and choreographer there and Patrick was one of the stars in his class from his mother who got her passion for dance and from his father he got his love of horses and the air free in his family, second best was not enough and Patrick did not stop, but he danced, he excelled in all sports, gymnastics trac and soccer, it was while playing soccer that he badly hurt his knee it was an injury which would later haunt his career as a dancer he went to New York where he joined the Joffrey and Harkness dance companies but soon his injuries forced him to give up dancing and he then took up acting his first major op Opportunity came the Broadway musical Grease replaced John Travolta and was soon on his way to Hollywood where he appeared in a teen movie called Skip Town USA which got him criticism comparing him to Rudolph Valentino and oh yeah John Travolta but Patrick decided not to go on the route of a teen idol he chose instead to push to meet words like the outsiders and the north and south tv miniseries.

However, it wasn't until dirty dancing that Patrick's retirement finally paid off. of fast-paced Hollywood life is here on his California ranch nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, he calls it Bizarre Ranch, and Patrick, who used to work as a carpenter during the lean years, is giving it a complete makeover with tin ceilings. cathedral and cedar beams in the living room this is a man who is still very much a texas cowboy oh i get it she used to do this when she was a kid uh huh yeah callahan you're the first one ever told me that loves horses, not just western ones. that he works but also arabian stallion your boy jogs but the horses are not the only inhabitants here are peacocks cats and his prize dogs yes Patrick Swayze is a man who does everything with passion and intensity to prepare for the role in his next film which he spent hours learning kickboxing and weight training and it takes an enormous amount of discipline and bodybuilding to deal with his newest student, let alone Patrick Swayze, what would you ask for in a cooking lesson?

He said let's try the Mambo okay no rehearsal on what a teacher now feel it feeling they go to my soul good good very good give me the quick yes wonderful thank you oh well we all have our fantasies but this beautiful creature is reality the Patrick's partner in life his wife actress dancer Lisa close to me they met in her mother's dance studio over 15 years ago and have been married for 12 it was the dance studio that served as the backdrop for the two biggest influences in Patrick's life his wife and his mother and when I sat down to talk I asked him about the two tell me about your mother she taught you to dance yes yes and she taught me what was the meaning of discipline you know in good meaning you can't waltz through life you know you can I don't expect things to be handed to you on a silver platter you have to work for it and deserve it but when you were a little boy and your mother said I'll take you and put you in he dance studio in Texas, young children. she didn't dance no ma'am okay how did you feel good i started so young no no i didn't know i mean i'm seeing what all the other kids were doing and wanted to do it uh you know so i got pictures of me and sailor suits and tap shoes from the time when I was knee high on a grasshopper and people tell me it was kind of scary when my mom would try to teach me, I'd hang from the bars pinching girls and stuff and at the age of four four to eight I guess or actually probably four to 18 i was still pinching girls at 18 well i thought it was mr.

Casanova, you know because of insecurity, tell me about your father. Here was your mother in the dance studio. He wanted me to kick her. How did your father feel about it? scared, I'd turn gay, um, I was still, you know, because he, you know, he was a cowboy from Texas, I'm a part of him, I didn't understand these things when you live in Texas, yeah, okay, and the other kids are making fun of him of you. i know how to play sport anything football baseball and you got your ballet flats and your leggings have you ever had to prove you're a real texas kid?

I am honest one way or another. that I got hit over and over again when I was little and that wasn't very good and then it started a whole process of learning what it means I'm a ballet dancer with a chip on my shoulder what do you know and then I woke up one day and realized Realize you know I was becoming the same thing I hated when this was around 20 after I went to New York so I went to New York and I was the macho that I was that was all macho made me ballet dancer yes I'm not like the rest of you yes when did dancing become a passion when did I really commit to being a dancer was when the world's doctors and my mother told me I couldn't do it after my knee. it was destroyed for a few years.

I had almost an operation a year because there's a bad man three four years yeah yeah and I kept dancing and I kept dancing so even though everyone sees you as an excellent dancer and dirty dancing you know that's hard you really can't do everything so easily no i don't become a master of compensation if you watch me in slow motion you will see me take all the pressure all the weight with that right leg those years in new york what was the worst time i kept going to the doctors and found out I had a staph infection. to go to the hospital and they had a week to try to save the leg and if they didn't save it within a week they would have to remove it from my hip and the biggest thing the knee did was I thought all it was was this I know with this dancer the dancer the athlete who made the machine not a person ah said it changed you that you had always thought in your game that you were the body and now maybe there was a mind me I had to find out until then I was afraid to look inside for fear to find nothing you know i'd get my fears would be proven right the dance was over the acting start you come here your first movie i got a lot of attention with skate town usa right and you got that review saying he's the sexiest thing since Travolta and then Valentino Valentino and so on and then not much I deliberately disappeared I walked away because all you know is it just scared me because I was some kind of teen idol and teen magazine It's was they were jumping on me and they offered me a four picture deal on six other movies and I thought you couldn't do it I didn't I hadn't been studying all my life to throw it down the drain becoming a face the same thing I was afraid of, I had a face and a pair of skinny jeans anyway, yeah, and I was willing to trust that with enough study and enough growth and enough connection to myself and the truth in me that I could become an actor to be counted on by an actor with respect you don't know a personality but what a guts you turn around and say I'm going to become a real actor really and that takes a lot of guts it's like something my manager said is most people come to Los Angeles and I know from the plane and that's as good as ever and Lisa and I have had a passion to not let that happen so tell me about Lisa she's literally my creative partner it feels like there's a power r real between us it feels like there's real chemistry like we're soul mates if you believe that kind of thing we met before and joined in another life there's just intense passion cause our fights are huge and our love is huge, nah, this smash hit Dirty Dancing, did you know what Dirty Dancing was going to be? the breakthrough no I didn't know it I knew it was I was advised not to do it why did I only do it in reading?

Cute little movie you know, so why did you do it? I had feelings for Johnny, a boy from the streets, a castle, yes, a boy from the streets struggling to like himself, to believe in himself, to believe that he could be something more. of what society will allow him or what mom and dad taught him he could be or whatever you know um i felt i could do something with this guy why do you think people have to say it five times 10 times 20 times there's a 100 plus club for dirty dancing women t i've seen it in theaters not on video in theaters over a hundred times why does everyone dream that someone would see another world of single laws with that would see beyond the outside and see how they are really, they may not be the pretty people a world but a big deal someone sees through that and cares about them as people and I think that's the most important thing that this movie communicates is a relationship not because you know how someone moves his ass but for what's inside today do you have a philosophy? what you live by passion quality integrity and the things my mommy and daddy taught me about being a southern gentleman patrick your father died in 1982 this that i read was terribly hard for you it wasn't just something you could accept uh i had mm love that man, that guy, you caught me off guard, his fire, uh, my dad and my manager Bob LeMond, the two most important men in my life are dead and I made it after my dad died, my passion.

No then I was going to make that man proud of me until I die everything I wanted for me everything I dreamed of no you never got to know her Charlie Pratt oh jesus well that was her problem she thought crime I was weak, yeah, Texas mentality, you've done him proud, you think? I think so, I think the one thing I really wish he knew, since he never got to know that, he never got to know that at least and I get into this horse business and everything I ever dreamed I'd buy. ranch and uh, I would run, you know, and part of my passion for horses is dear, my father, I can't think of any more wonderful loving compliment you could give the way you feel you know to the person who hasn't . seen Dirty Dancing, whoever he is, and who doesn't know Patrick Swayze when he first met you tonight, what do you want them to know about you? that I am someone to be reckoned with that that I can give people something through my work, that they see you, that you know that they make their lives lighter for a moment or that they feel inspired or passionate about who they are and feel good with themselves and I can definitely shake my ass with you.