By Valerie J. Nelson(c) 2009, Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES -- Patrick Swayze, an actor and classically trained dancer whose role in the film 'Dirty Dancing' made him a movie star, died Monday. He was 57. Swayze, who also starred in the blockbuster film 'Ghost,' died in Los Angeles with his family at his side, said his publicist, Annett Wolf, to The Associated Press. Swayze learned he had pancreatic cancer early in 2008, a diagnosis that came two weeks after production wrapped on the pilot of 'The Beast,' an A&E television series in which Swayze starred as an unorthodox FBI agent. Although the cancer was advanced, he was found to have a controlled form of the disease and persuaded the network to go ahead with the series. It was shot over five months in Chicago while Swayze was undergoing chemotherapy and taking an experimental drug that targets tumors. 'I'm proud of what I'm doing,' Swayze told The New York Times in October. 'How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you're a dead man? You go to work.' Days before the series debuted in January 2009, Swayze was admitted to a hospital with pneumonia, but he was released after a week and went home to rest. Swayze's fame intruded on his final months as he wrestled with what he called the 'reckless reporting' that regularly pronounced he was near death. Such coverage amounted to 'emotional cruelty,' he said, 'when hope is so precious.' In 1987, when 'Dirty Dancing' was released, it was a sleeper hit that soared in large part because of Swayze's charisma and dancing skills. Critics praised the ruffian nobility he brought to the character of Johnny Castle, a sexy-yet-sensitive dance instructor from the wrong side of the tracks. They also noted the red-hot chemistry between Swayze and his teenage pupil, nicknamed 'Baby,' played by Jennifer Grey. Their exuberant performances were considered career-making. To Swayze, the musical love story set at a Catskills Mountains resort worked because people relived 'those wonderfully painful moments ... when you just need to love somebody with all your heart, and to be loved back. ... Plus, it was a pretty sexy movie,' he said in 1997. In 'Dirty Dancing's' climactic scene, Swayze delivers a line with swaggering perfection. 'Nobody puts Baby in a corner,' he says as he defies her father and pulls her up for a final uplifting dance sequence. Fans said that scene secured the movie's place in the pantheon of best date movies. But he turned down a reported $7 million to star in a 'Dirty Dancing' sequel and resisted roles that would cast him as a hunk with a heart. 'I look for curveballs in my life,' Swayze told the Chicago Tribune in 1989. After appearing as a roughneck police officer in 'Next of Kin' and as a bouncer in 'Road House' -- two 1989 movies that flopped -- he fought for a leading role in the romantic tear-jerker 'Ghost.' Swayze told an interviewer that he thought the part would help him be seen as an actor, rather than the 'dance dude' or 'action guy.' In the film, Swayze is an investment banker who returns as a ghost to solve his murder and express his love for his girlfriend, played by Demi Moore. Whoopi Goldberg, in an Oscar-winning role, is the reluctant medium who conveys his other-worldly messages. The film was a runaway hit. 'Ghost' confirmed Swayze's heartthrob status and conferred legitimacy on Swayze as an actor. The film seemed to assure a career for him as a leading man, but Swayze went in other directions. He starred with Keanu Reeves in the action-packed 'Point Break' (1991) so he could become a licensed sky diver and surf big waves. In 'City of Joy' (1992), Swayze was an idealistic American surgeon in Calcutta, India. In 'To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar' (1995), he played a drag queen. Defending his choices, Swayze said he was 'fed up with that Hollywood blockbuster mentality.' Cult movies, he said, 'have given me a career for 30 years. It wouldn't have been worth it if I had been stuck as the leading man or the dance guy,' reported the London Daily Express in 2008. 'The loneliness of fame' was a theme to which he often returned, cautioning in a Playboy magazine interview in 1992: Fame can make '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.' He credited his wife, Lisa Niemi, a dancer he met back home in Texas and married in 1976, for pulling him back from a drinking problem that started after the death of his father in 1982. Swarmed by a crowd at a 1989 film premiere, Swayze destroyed his hotel room and realized he needed to quit drinking, he told People magazine in 1990. He said he quit the next day. But his drinking problem recurred, and he struggled with depression after his older sister Vicki committed suicide in 1994 and several friends died. An ultimatum from his wife sent him into rehab. 'I have a wild-man edge,' Swayze once remarked. 'If my life looks good, I sabotage it.' He escaped from fame to the five-acre ranch named Rancho Bizarro in the San Gabriel Mountains. Swayze was born Aug. 18, 1952, in Houston, the second of five children of Jesse and Patsy Swayze. His mother was a dance teacher and professional ballet choreographer who choreographed the 1980 film 'Urban Cowboy.' His father was an engineering draftsman whom Swayze called a 'gentle cowboy.' His mother taught Swayze to dance at an early age, and he was unmercifully bullied because of it. 'I had to fight my way up from the days I was little,' Swayze told the Sunday Times of London. After two years at San Jacinto College in Houston, Swayze dropped out to play Prince Charming in a touring 'Disney on Parade' ice show. In 1972, he moved to New York, intent on a career in ballet. His future wife, Niemi, whom he met at his mother's dance studio, followed after graduating from high school in 1975. Both landed jobs with Joffrey Ballet's second company. Swayze joined Eliot Feld Ballet Company in 1976, but after a year as a principal dancer, a knee injury from high school football flared up, ending his dance career. He turned to acting and was cast in the lead of 'Grease' on Broadway. The year he moved to Los Angeles, Swayze appeared in his first film -- 1979's 'Skatetown, U.S.A.,' as the leader of a roller-skating and dancing gang. On television, he received attention for playing a leukemia victim on television's 'MASH' in 1981. He said the role gave him hope that he could do quality work. In 1983, Swayze appeared with Matt Dillon and other fledgling stars in Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Outsiders,' which boosted his career. He also starred in the first film widely distributed with a PG-13 rating, 1984's 'Red Dawn.' Swayze's performance as a young man who becomes a rebel leader was praised for convincingly communicating his emotional torment. Swayze considered his first big break to be a starring role as Confederate soldier Orry Main in ABC's 1985 Civil War miniseries 'North and South.' With his wife, Swayze co-starred in the futuristic 'Steel Dawn,' which was released in 1987 after 'Dirty Dancing.' Occasionally, he composed for movies, including writing and singing 'She's Like the Wind' in 'Dirty Dancing' and performing background music in 'Road House.' Throughout the 1990s, Swayze sporadically appeared in films but remained largely out of the limelight. Thrown from a horse in 1997, he shattered his legs and left shoulder; it took 12 operations to rebuild them. In 2003, he fulfilled a dream of making a dance movie with his wife. Titled 'One Last Dance,' the film was based on her semi-autobiographical play about two aging ballerinas. Swayze called it his 'swan song ... the last time I could pull that kind of dancing off.' When asked in 2004 what he did in his spare time, he replied that being a rancher, wildlife conservationist and actor-director-producer kept him busy. 'I feel like I wasted time with stardom back in the '80s,' Swayze said. 'Now I want it all. I want to do as much as I can.' Swayze is survived by his wife, Lisa, and his mother, Patsy. 