(Credits: Far Out / Paramount Home Entertainment / Fremantle International Distribution /
Mon 2 February 2026 20:45, UK
The late Patrick Swayze had a hell of a run in the four years between 1987 and 1991. In that short space of time, he made four movies, Dirty Dancing, Road House, Ghost and Point Break that did the very tricky thing of making him equally as attractive to both men and women and grossed almost a billion dollars at the box office.
That string of movies made him one of the most in-demand and most famous film stars on the planet, but it undoubtedly came at a huge cost to Swayze and his health, both physical and mental, and in 1989, he was already speaking about having to turn to therapy and investigating meditation in order to make sense of the insanity around him.
Sadly, the overarching issue that the actor had was his turning to alcohol in order to cope, and he battled hard against drink for ten years, beginning after his father’s death in 1982. The fact that he had already been fighting alcoholism for many years before he became world famous makes his performances in those historic films all the more impressive, especially those involving prolonged periods of action like Road House.
At the height of his global fame in the early 1990s, however, Swayze’s drinking had become a serious issue, and his family was struggling to know what to do. Two years had passed since Point Break, and he had only made a brief cameo in Robert Altman’s The Player and the film City of Joy about poverty in India, which had flopped. He then signed on to a comedy called Father Hood in 1993 alongside Halle Berry, which would open to disastrous reviews.
His director on Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow, recalled, “He started drinking so heavily during the filming of Father Hood that it was affecting the shooting schedule… In fact, there’s one incident where he was doing a scene in the back of a car, and he actually would pass out, and they would have to wake him up to do the scene.”
Adding, “You know it’s getting pretty bad when you get to that state. It was heartbreaking. Everyone recognised that it was time for Patrick to change, or he was going to die.”
Swayze had no choice but to go into rehab, pulling back from the movie business and not making another film until 1995’s drag comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actor’ and was a hit with audiences.
It was by far the end of his problems with alcohol however, in 2000 Swayze, who held a private pilot’s license, crashed a Cessna onto a dirt road, clipping a telegraph pole before climbing out and reportedly asking bystanders to help him conceal alcohol that was stored in the plane, witnesses calling him extremely intoxicated, although that was later questioned in place of possible carbon monoxide poisoning.
His film career never quite recovered, although he had a hit with Donnie Darko in 2001 and appeared on stage in London’s West End. He would find considerable acclaim with what turned out to be his final acting role before dying of cancer in 2009, a crime drama which ran for one season called The Beast.
Related Topics