“It’s insanity”: when Patrick Swayze turned down $10million to keep his dignity
The thing about having lots of money, as most of human history has taught us, is that once you have it, you tend to want even more of it. Movie stars, for instance, don’t get rich by turning down lucrative offers, which is what made Patrick Swayze‘s mentality at the height of his fame even more impressive.
The concept of ‘nice work if you can get it’ is not wasted on the rest of us of course; it’s not that you can blame people like Johnny Depp for being the face of Dior Sauvage despite already having $150million in the bank, or Miley Cyrus hawking Gucci, or Millie Bobby Brown literally adding her name to any product that will write her a cheque, because let’s face it who wouldn’t?
Even if you have an existing bank balance that could buy Cornwall the opportunity for an easy payday is just too tempting for these people. Yes, they could afford to buy a house that costs $10million, but what if there’s a house with a slightly bigger pool down the road that costs $11m? Sign me up for another pots and pans set with my signature on the non-stick surface.
But what price artistic integrity? Well, that’s a more interesting concept. Because the reality is that we don’t usually get to know what opportunities the stars of the big screen, or rather their management, turn down on a daily basis. We’ve certainly seen enough awkward Japanese adverts with Hollywood A-listers awkwardly clutching some kind of nonsense while trying to think about the money, but how many of them would do what Swayze did at the pinnacle of his career?
Because in the late 1980s, movie stars didn’t really come much bigger than he, the hunky star responsible for films like Dirty Dancing, Ghost, Road House and Point Break was being paid astronomical money and having commercial tie-ins thrust at him from every angle, which made his stance on it all the more impressive.
Back then, he told the LA Times, “There are people who want me to do a cologne. They want to call it ‘Patrick’. I was offered a fortune to make exercise videos. Posters, all kinds of stuff – something like $10million worth. It’s insanity. I’m not going to do any of it.”
Fair play to him, although a quick bit of research shows that, probably due to his fame waning somewhat and a lack of acting opportunities coming his way, he didn’t always stick to it. In fact, in 2004, he went down the Kevin Bacon route and signed on to a lucrative tie-in with the now extinct British mobile phone company Orange for a series of ads.
You can’t fault him for that, though. By that point, Swayze had only really made two successful movies in a decade, 1995’s drag queen comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar and 2001’s Donnie Darko. In the same year he made the Orange ads, he was reduced to making Hallmark movies and was also struggling with alcoholism.
Sadly, he passed away in 2009, but he left some fantastic movies and a reminder that money isn’t everything.
