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A new biography of Patrick Swayze describes how the actor worked 12 hour days without painkillers to shoot a TV series after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
The biography - called Patrick Swayze: One Last Dance - says the actor was determined to work as hard as ever on the US TV crime drama The Beast, despite being diagnosed in early 2008 with pancreatic cancer, which has a less than 5 per cent chance of survival.
"His work ethic was such that even though he was in terrible pain during the shooting of The Beast, he took only one day off and refused to take painkillers," the biography's author, Wendy Leigh, said.
"He didn't want anything at all to befuddle his acting performance or his mind."
In the book, one of the show's producer recalls how Swayze - who rose to fame showing off his brawny physique playing a dance instructor in the hit 1987 movie Dirty Dancing - told them he had some "horrible news" but would go on with the show.
"He said: 'I'm in great condition. I'm a cowboy. I'm a dancer. I'll beat this'," producer Jamie Erlicht is quoted as saying.
Since then, Swayze, 56, told Barbara Walters in an interview that aired in January he was "going through hell".
In the same interview, Walters asked Swayze how long he had to live.
"He actually asked Barbara Walters to ask him that heartbreaking question," Leigh said.
"Because Patrick wants it all out there, he has always been open-hearted."
The book also covers Swayze's upbringing in Texas and former ambitions as a professional dancer and football player.
It points to his other pivotal role in the 1990 movie Ghost, and says on the set of Dirty Dancing he was disgruntled that he had to tone down his dancing and that co-star Jennifer Grey was not as accomplished a dancer as he was.
The book, which is unauthorised and does not include interviews with Swayze, affirms his dislike of a line from that film, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," which has been voted in various polls as one of the worst lines in film history.
Swayze and his wife Lisa Niemi are currently working on their own memoir.
- Reuters
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