The actors who gave Patrick Swayze nightmares: “I probably wouldn’t have survived”
Being famous in Hollywood surely isn’t easy.
From crazed fans and nosey tabloids who destroy any semblance of privacy, to the pressures of always looking good and keeping up a positive reputation, there’s probably going to be a lot of thoughts – and worries – always buzzing around your mind. And that doesn’t include the fact that you still have to do your job.
Patrick Swayze initially struggled when he suddenly became a star, propelled by the success of Dirty Dancing. There was suddenly all of this attention on him that he didn’t know how to navigate, and on top of that, he was being labelled more than just a talented new actor – he was now a sex symbol.
How do you deal with having this many eyes on you? No human is built for such intense media fanfare and constant surveillance and scrutiny, and Swayze certainly found it hard to adjust to his newfound fame.
“Everything happening and going crazy, and then all the focus being put on sex symbol and not actor and all this,” Swayze told The Oklahoman. “All the stuff that’s gone on has been… that’s why I know I probably wouldn’t have survived it after Skatetown [his first film], because I understand how much it wants to rip my guts out right now. It probably would have killed me before.”
The pressures of being a sex symbol, the subject of news reports, photographed by paparazzi, talked about in gossip magazines, and criticised by movie reviewers can certainly be too much to take. It didn’t help that Swayze found himself battling alcoholism in the wake of his father’s death in 1982, either. For a time, Swayze actually started to feel haunted by late celebrities who had died young.
Adding, “I used to have nightmares of Freddy Prinze and Janis Joplin and James Dean and Marilyn Monroe because I could see similarities, the same kind of driven individual and the same kind of person, you know, wrapped up in suffering and dues and all this.”
Listing actors and musicians who made a real dent on the entertainment industry before their lights ultimately fizzled out prematurely, Swayze highlighted the very real issue that Hollywood has in failing to support its stars.
A 36-year-old Monroe and a 27-year-old Joplin were both victims of drug overdoses, with the former’s death widely suggested to be suicide (although her death remains shrouded in mystery). Meanwhile, Prinze shot himself following a struggle with depression when he was only 22, and Dean died in a car accident at the age of 24, his death coming almost as fast as he had risen to acclaim as a 1950s icon.
Swayze didn’t want to join the club of celebrities who failed to adjust to life once they became famous, so to get there, he tried “all kinds of soul-searching,” as he puts it. He added, “I thought all I was what I looked like and what I could do with my body. I didn’t know if there was anything inside of me.”
He did everything from archery and EST training to Buddhism and even dipped his toes into the waters of Scientology, but he soon realised that none of these practices were needed, instead finding solace in his wife, Lisa.
