Patrick Swayze, who died on 14 September, 2009, was an actor and singer whose roles in Dirty Dancing and Ghost made him an international star.

His training as a dancer and rugged good looks gave him instant sex appeal and ensured him a prominent place in popular culture.

Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on 18 August, 1952, in Houston, Texas. His father was a rodeo cowboy and his mother a ballet school owner who later worked as a movie choreographer. He was distantly related to actors William Holden and Tom Hulce.

Unsurprisingly his dancing training started at a young age, but as soon as he was old enough he took up various sports to give himself more credibility with his schoolmates. Not only did this give him a graceful but athletic physique, but he was also offered several college scholarships.

After completing a gymnastics programme at San Jacinto College in Houston, he got his break in show business with a touring Disney ice show. In 1972 he joined a New York ballet troupe, but a high school football injury resurfaced and limited his abilities. He refocused his energies onto the Broadway stage, appearing in productions of West Side Story and Grease.

He made his film debut in the self-proclaimed “Roller Disco Movie of the Year”, Skatetown, USA (1979) and then had several TV roles, including appearing in an episode of M*A*S*H. His first credible role was in Francis Ford Coppola’s gang movie The Outsiders (1983). He then had starring roles in the war movie Red Dawn (1984) and the civil war mini series North and South (1985/86), but it was not until 1987’s Dirty Dancing that his potential as a leading man was realised.

He starred opposite Jennifer Grey who arrives at a holiday camp and falls in love with Swayze’s tough dancing instructor, going from ingénue to rebel in the process. The film’s soundtrack, to which Mr Swayze contributed She’s Like the Wind, won an Oscar, but it was the sensuous dance routines that turned it into such an iconic piece of cinematic history.

Equally sensuous and iconic was the scene in Ghost (1990) in which Demi Moore is visited by her dead lover while at her potter’s wheel, the strains of Unchained Melody providing the soundtrack. It was enough to put him top of several ‘Sexiest People Alive’ polls, but the role also allowed Swayze to demonstrate a previously unseen range that veered from the tragic to comedic.

The two films, among the most popular and successful of the era, were inevitably destined to mark the high point of his career. His other movie credits include City of Joy (1992), Father Hood (1993), the quirky drag queen romp To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), Forever Lulu (2000), and Green Dragon (2001).

He also had a supporting part in the cult hit Donnie Darko (2001) and starred alongside Billy Bob Thornton in the comedy Waking Up in Reno (2002).

In 2004 he made a cameo appearance in the Dirty Dancing ‘sequel’, Havana Nights. He also returned to the stage, starring in a West End production of Guys and Dolls.

The actor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January 2008.

He had been married since 1975 to Lisa Niemi, a dance pupil of his mother.