20 Questions: Patrick Swayze
June, 1992
As the Rolling Stones warned us years ago, you can't always get what you want: Patrick Swayze doesn't fancy being a Hollywood heartthrob, but the women of America have spoken. After leaving the girls breathless in "Dirty Dancing" and heartbroken in "Ghost," Swayze finds himself in a corner. Although he doesn't look it, the baby-faced actor is almost 40 and has really had it, thank you, with playing hunks with hearts of gold. To make that crystal clear, Swayze tackled the role of an alcoholic, disillusioned doctor in his latest film, "City of Joy." Swayze knows he's gambling with his career, and all his chips are on the table. Lawrence Linderman interviewed Swayze at the five-acre ranch Swayze and his wife, dancer Lisa Niemi, own just north of Los Angeles. Linderman reports: "This won't come as a surprise: Patrick Swayze is almost overwhelmingly emotional. He laughs, he shouts and, yes, he cries. What surprised me most, however, was the realization that the guy is a classic overachiever. Swayze has a compulsion to win--and win big--at everything he attempts. So maybe he will, indeed, show he belongs in the same league with the actors he admires. If he doesn't, it won't be for lack of trying."
1.
[Q] Playboy: Last summer, People magazine proclaimed you the sexiest man alive, a title previously bestowed on you by Us magazine. How comfortable is it for you to be hunk of the year?
[A] Swayze: It's good for the career, but it's not good for the head, because if you believe it for one second, you're a dead man. I want to make a mark as an actor. I'd like to think that my career isn't about things like swinging my ass in Dirty Dancing. I'm looking for the spiritual. How far can it take me? How far can I go? What are our emotional limits? The further along I've come, the more I've discovered that we have no emotional limits. The biggest thing I've learned is that I have to keep studying, because there are always greater levels of trust to find within the character, within the scene and within myself as an actor.
[A] Hollywood is the most self-indulgent place on earth, and if you allow yourself to get sucked into that life, you start doing self-indulgent movies--and then, all of a sudden, those movies don't work. Unless the film maker has some kind of generous quality that brings people in, it's always going to be intellectual masturbation.
2.
[Q] Playboy: Do you think you've steered clear of self-indulgent movies?
[A] Swayze: Well, in the beginning, you take what you can get. If a character allows you to shine, you do it. My first movie was Skatetown, U.S.A. and I saw it as an opportunity to get my foot in the door. The movie was destroyed by critics--no surprise there--but Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times went crazy about me in his review. He started it off by writing--and I've never forgotten it--"Not since Valentino did his tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse has there been such a confident display of male sexuality. Patrick Swayze sizzles."
3.
[Q] Playboy: You grew up in Houston. What advantages and burdens come with being a Texan?
[A] Swayze: I spent so many years being competitive that I hate it now. I don't watch gladiator sports like football anymore and I'm no longer into "kill the other guy." I got out of that part of the Texas mentality.
[A] In my youth, I was filled with a self-deprecating rage. From kindergarten until after I started high school, I was always teased by other kids about being different. My father was a gentle cowboy from a small town in the panhandle who fell in love with an intensely talented big-city girl from Houston. My mother was a choreographer--still is--who had her own ballet company. Patsy Swayze was the majordomo of dance and theater in Houston. She was the lady you called if you wanted to put on a show. Mom was a major, major force in the city's artistic life.
4.
[Q] Playboy: Were you teased because of what your mother did?
[A] Swayze: No, it was about what I did, which was dancing and playing the violin. There were always groups of kids whispering about me in a way that ate my insides alive. The peer pressure was strange and that's largely where the early rage came from, trying to figure out who I was. When I got to junior high, some of the older guys started calling me out: "Whaddya got in your bag, Swayze? You got your ballet shoes in there? Is that a tiny guitar you're carrying or is that a violin? Girls play the violin." I probably averaged a fight a week.
[A] They didn't understand how much anger was running through my system, and they definitely didn't know that I had been training in the martial arts. My mother's performing-arts school was in a building that also housed a martial-arts academy and Mom worked out a deal: In return for all the martial-arts students studying ballet with her for flexibility and control, her students could study martial arts. I started there with judo, and after that I studied many different disciplines--aikido, tae kwon do, shotokan, isshin-ryu, kenpo and kung fu. The purpose wasn't to learn how to kick people's faces in, though I got very good at it. Many times I would hit that beautiful, blissful place of connecting with my ki--my center--at the expense of someone else's well-being. Everything seemed to be in slow motion when I was fighting, and it became effortless to tear a guy apart and watch his face distort as I split his lip open and broke his nose. Eventually, that took the chip off my shoulder because I hated doing that to another human being. Mind you, it's a lesson I had to learn quite a few times before I said, "Enough. I will never mess up another guy's face unless my survival is at stake and I have no other choice. It's wrong."
5.
[Q] Playboy: Did you ever send anyone to the hospital?
[A] Swayze: Yes, but I don't want to talk about it. If people think I'm tough, it could create problems in my life again, and I have enjoyed getting away from that.
6.
[Q] Playboy: You seem to enjoy that rare commodity: a successful Hollywood marriage. (continued on page 166)Patrick Swayze(continued from page 121) How did you and your wife, Lisa, meet?
[A] Swayze: We met when I was assistant manager at the Galleria ice rink in Houston. I'd see her hanging out, smoking a cigarette, leaning against a pole and always alone. She usually wore bell-bottom jeans and looked kind of schleppy, but every time we talked, I got more intelligence from her than from any other woman I'd ever been involved with. I was twenty, Lisa was fifteen!
[A] She was the first female I could really confide in. Lisa wasn't one of those girls hanging on your ear going [in a high voice], "Oh, Patrick!" I hated that and Lisa wasn't like that; she was shy and mysterious. When she discovered dancing, she probably saved her life by finding a place to put all the sensitivity that was imploding inside her. My mother wasn't too thrilled about my seeing her because Lisa was her prodigy and Mom didn't want me to mess her up.
7.
[Q] Playboy: After making four movies back to back--The Outsiders, Uncommon Valor, Grandview U.S.A. and Red Dawn--did you feel you were on the verge of becoming a star?
[A] Swayze: What I mostly felt was burnout. That's the reason I went back to acting classes. I'd been jamming for two years with no rest and I was fried. I hadn't realized the movie business could be as hard as it is. I always look for passion in my work, but after working so hard, passion just went out the window. I was too tired to do it anymore.
[A] Something else, too: I felt I wasn't good enough. The work was coming easy but I wasn't winning any Academy Awards. It was time to move up to the next level: I wanted to work with the Robert De Niros, the Harrison Fords, the Dustin Hoffmans and directors like Martin Scorsese. Trying to get considered for A-list projects and A-list directors isn't easy. If you allow yourself to become nothing but a teen idol, it's unlikely it'll ever happen. The only hope I had was to go back to class and try to progress as an actor and grow as a man.
[A] Then I started working on North and South, a twenty-four-hour TV miniseries. A lot of people told me I was crazy to go back and do television and that it would hurt my movie career. But the scope of this Civil War epic and the money that was going to be spent on it convinced me to do otherwise. And I was right: North and South made me a household name.
8.
[Q] Playboy: Did the glare of publicity become a little too bright for you?
[A] Swayze: I realized I couldn't hide out because then I'd never get the kind of movies I wanted to do. That was my first step in accepting fame as a way of life. I felt that I'd done enough movies and had paid my dues. It was time to make a big splash. My choices were limited and, at that point, I didn't want to look like a flash in the pan. I wanted to take the world by storm. So I brought dancing back into my life. Once again, I wound up going against the advice of everyone I knew: I did Dirty Dancing.
9.
[Q] Playboy: What were their objections?
[A] Swayze: They thought it would be a fluffy little movie. When I read the screenplay, I saw how it could affect people's hearts, even though it was fluffy. The script validated some special things for me and I really liked the Johnny Castle character. In many ways, he was me growing up. Johnny was a trendsetter. But he was down on himself because he'd become a piece of meat that rich women paid to get into his pants. He was turning into a male prostitute. Eventually, because of his relationship with the girl, he gains the courage to have a sense of self-worth and to perform the kind of dancing that he'd done only in basements. All the elements were there for a terrific character and a terrific movie.
10.
[Q] Playboy: When Dirty Dancing opened, did you suspect you'd become one of the hottest box-office attractions in America?
[A] Swayze: Not really. I was disappointed that someone on TV would say, "And after this commercial break, we'll see how Patrick Swayze bumps and grinds his way into movie history." For a while, that stuff wanted to drive me into a beer bottle. Don't underestimate the effect that fame can have on you. If you don't have a strong sense of self-esteem, it can send you into a tailspin. You feel you've somehow pulled off an enormous hoax and that your whole life is a lie. All the hype wound up making me cynical and I turned into a not-very-pretty drunk. I'd get a six-pack of beer and go up on Mulholland Drive almost every night to race the guys there. Lisa would want to talk to me and try to help me sort out this stuff, but if it sounded at all like criticism, I'd slam the door and take off. That was my Crazy Swayze phase.
11.
[Q] Playboy: Were you doing anything else destructive?
[A] Swayze: Like drugs? Yeah. Cocaine put me into a living hell. I'd lock myself into a room because I couldn't be with people. Everybody else would do their coke and have a good time; I couldn't do it. This lasted maybe six months, spread out over a few years. I did it mostly when I was on location. But coke and speed and downers didn't work for me--I hated to be out of control and unable to put words together. I would allow myself to be physically destructive only up to a point. I didn't put in all those years to build a career and then destroy it with something stupid. If I were going to destroy it, I wanted to go up in flames in a way that would make the papers, like: Swayze Dies in Car Crash.
12.
[Q] Playboy: Why were you so ambivalent about becoming a star?
[A] Swayze: When you fear that maybe you're not good enough to achieve what you want to achieve but you go ahead and try anyway, that's great. Still, if you win, you have to put it in its proper place: You won because of your belief in yourself and not because you were better than everybody else. When I got straight on that, I became a lot more comfortable with my life.
13.
[Q] Playboy: And with your career, as well? Didn't you follow up Dancing with two critical and box-office flops--Road House and Next of Kin?
[A] Swayze: Everybody expected Road House to go through the roof and it didn't, but it made its money back and earned a profit. I walked away from Road House and Next of Kin screaming for something that would cause people to walk out of theaters feeling wonderful about their lives. But I needed to walk out of a role feeling wonderful about my own life. Then my wife and my agent showed me the script for Ghost, and when I read it, it brought tears to my eyes in a big way.
14.
[Q] Playboy: We have heard that when director Jerry Zucker learned that you wanted in on Ghost, he said, "Over my dead body." Why do you suppose he felt that way?
[A] Swayze: [Laughs] He saw Road House.
15.
[Q] Playboy: So how did you get him to change his mind?
[A] Swayze: I called Jerry and said, "Just give me a chance. I'll come in and I'll read for you. I'll do the whole script right in your office. The only thing I won't do is screen-test for it." He asked why I wouldn't do a test. I said, "Because my work means too much to me to put a fifty percent version of it down on film for you to show to somebody."
16.
[Q] Playboy: Did you have any say about Whoopi Goldberg's being cast in Ghost?
[A] Swayze: No, but once I was in, I fought for her. They were talking about Tina Turner and Oprah Winfrey and others, but I wanted to work with Whoopi because she was perfect for the part. Jerry and I flew to Alabama, where she was shooting The Long Walk Home, to talk to her about it. Whoopi and I had an incredible rapport during that visit--we traded crystals--and after I left, I called her just to let her know that over my dead body would anybody else do that role.
17.
[Q] Playboy: Did you think that Ghost would become one of the biggest sleeper hits in Hollywood history?
[A] Swayze: I thought it could do well, but to gross five hundred million dollars worldwide--that was unheard of. Ghost was many different kinds of movies rolled up into one. It was a thriller, a suspense film, a romantic comedy, a buddy movie about a ghost and a clairvoyant, and maybe even a science-fiction movie, given all the special effects.
[A] By the time I got to Ghost, stardom didn't scare me anymore. The biggest change for me was that it drastically upgraded the quality of scripts that were sent to me. Ghost put me in serious contention for all the major films that were about to be made. I was finally on the A-list.
18.
[Q] Playboy: If that's true, then why did you next play a small role as a bank robber in Point Break?
[A] Swayze: To be honest, it gave me a chance to become a licensed sky diver and to fall off some of the biggest waves in the world. I had a great time doing that movie. For years, I'd been dying to do something like an Elephant Man, a character that wouldn't be dependent on my physicality but be dependent only on my skill as an actor. The role of Bodhi--a surfer guru with scars and long hair and skin ruined by the sun--took me closer to that point. I did keep asking myself, "What are people going to think when they see me in a supporting role as a bad guy? I may take some heat for this." It turned out to be an accidentally smart choice for me. I got a lot of feedback from people who really liked the Bodhi character.
19.
[Q] Playboy: Aside from getting on the A-list, how did Ghost change your status in Hollywood?
[A] Swayze: Word went out that Patrick Swayze can open a movie and that people want to see his movies--or so the studios thought. I was in the place I'd always dreamed about, but I was also in the same place I'd always been in, trying to find something worth a hill of beans to do. For months, I read at least ten scripts a week and I got very frustrated. And then the screenplay for City of Joy came along and it was a film I had to do. It's about a disillusioned doctor who goes to Calcutta in search of truth and who winds up living in the middle of one of the most horrifying slums on the planet. The film then moves into an epic story about the dignity of all of us as human beings. The character of the doctor--a young man trying to run from himself because what he sees in his insides is pretty ugly--just wrapped me up.
[A] Shooting this movie was possibly the saddest five months of my life. What I found doesn't compute with the Western mind. How can these people lead lives so consumed with such terrible poverty that they sell parts of their bodies in order to feed their families? It doesn't make sense how they can have such beautiful smiles and be willing to share their last bowl of rice with you. Director Roland Joffé went to India to show the dignity and power of its people. I think City of Joy is going to change a lot of people's lives. It changed mine.
20.
[Q] Playboy: You've said you've wanted to be a combination of Brando, Dean and De Niro, but recently you added Spencer Tracy. Any more people on that list?
[A] Swayze: I have always said Brando, De Niro, Dean and Spencer Tracy; I've also said John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier. I don't mean to be presumptuous or to put myself in that category, but that's my desire. I create impossible dreams for myself and I figure if I get halfway there, I've come a long way.
the man who shook his buns in dirty dancing shows us his more sensitive side
"All the hype wound up making me cynical and I turned into a not-very-pretty drunk."
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