The American actor Patrick Swayze died last night after almost two years battling pancreatic cancer.

Annett Wolf, Swayze’s publicist, said that the 57-year-old star was at home in Los Angeles with his family. “Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months,” she said in a statement released early this morning.

The actor had announced last spring that he was suffering from the illness, and continued working while undergoing treatment. He finally stopped work in June this year when his show The Beast was cancelled because of his deteriorating health.

Two weeks ago he left the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre to return home after it became clear nothing could be done to stave off the inevitable.

The three-times Golden Globe nominee won stardom in 1987 when he took the lead in the coming-of-age romance Dirty Dancing. Swayze's mother had been a dancer and choreographer, and the role might have been made for him. His co-star Jennifer Grey played an idealistic young woman on vacation with her family and Swayze was the resort’s bad-boy dance instructor Johnny Castle. The film made great use of both his graceful moves and his muscular physique.

It became an international phenomenon with albums, an Oscar-winning hit song in (I’ve Had) the Time of My Life, stage productions and a 2004 sequel, Dirty Dancing Havana Nights in which he made a cameo appearance.

Ghost, the 1990 love story in which he played a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancée played by Demi Moore through a medium played by Whoopi Goldberg, cemented his status as a screen favourite.

Among a host of other films he made in his 30-year career the thriller Point Break in 1991 and the cult movie Donnie Darko in 2000 both won critical acclaim. In 1991 People magazine listed the Texas-born actor as its “sexiest man alive”.

The 1990s were not so successful and he suffered from alcoholism, for a while retreating from public life.

He fought typecasting as the beefy romantic hero, accepting roles such as a drag queen in one 1995 film.

He said of his career: “The loneliness of fame was messing with my head. I made a conscious decision to break away from big films when I got alcohol out of my life.”

Despite the diagnosis of cancer, Swayze kept working. putting together a memoir with his wife of 34 years, Lisa Niemi. The couple had no children.

He also shot 13 episodes of The Beast, a cable television drama series.

He publicly acknowledged that time might be running out, given the grim nature of the disease. “I’d say five years is pretty wishful thinking,” Swayze told ABC television’s Barbara Walters early this year.

“Two years seems likely if you’re going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I’d better get a fire under it,” he added.

In the interview, Swayze also disclosed that the cancer had spread to his liver.

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