Patrick Swayze

Patrick Wayne Swayze grew up dancing, trained by his mother, and broke through in The Outsiders and Red Dawn before Dirty Dancing made him a romantic lead in 1987 and earned him his first Golden Globe nomination. He followed it with the bar-bouncer cult hit Road House, then Ghost in 1990 - a supernatural romance that landed him another nomination and became one of the decade's biggest films. Point Break came next, cementing his action credentials, and in 1995 he earned a third nomination playing a drag queen in To Wong Foo. People named him "Sexiest Man Alive" that same year. He also co-wrote "She's Like the Wind" for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, which hit number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Pancreatic cancer took him in 2009 at fifty-seven.