Patrick Swayze
Even before Ghost became 1990's No. 1 film — and a VHS tape we actually paid $99.95 for a year later — crystal-ballers were telling Patrick Swayze that spirits were watching over him. ''There's always been these psychics saying, 'Elvis is watching over Patrick Swayze. Elvis is trying to save Swayze from himself,''' the actor with the second-most-famous pair of swiveling hips explains from the California homestead he nicknamed Rancho Bizarro. ''I still get psychics calling me saying, 'Don't give up, Patrick. You're meant for big things — and it's in some level of ministry.'''
Okay, not likely, considering he thinks TNT trimming his Road House sex scene is as sacrilegious as we do. At 53, Swayze is still a curious combination of cowboy and ballet boy. ''I made a conscious decision about 10 years ago to have a great time screwing up my career,'' he says. After over a decade of playing the soul-searching beefcake who was either shakin' his butt (Dirty Dancing) or kickin' some (Red Dawn), he realized he wasn't burned-out, just bored. If he wanted to be a mature leading man à la Sean Connery or Clint Eastwood, he'd need to try on some ''trippy, interesting characters'': a drag queen in 1995's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, for example, or a closeted pedophile in 2001's Donnie Darko, or ''a horny golf pro'' in a red lamé thong in the upcoming dark English comedy Keeping Mum (opposite Rowan Atkinson).
It would also mean never again working for money, only for ''passion.'' To that note, he's just released an 18-years-in-the-making labor of love, One Last Dance, on DVD. Shot in 2001, it's the story of two professional dancers (Swayze and his wife of 30 years, the film's writer-director, Lisa Niemi) who reunite to save their former company. ''It goes way beyond dance,'' says Swayze, who trained for five years to get back in the shape that had Eliot Feld choreographing a ballet for him and Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1977. ''What we wanted to do was hit that moment in time for all of us when we gave up on a dream.'' More on the passion front: Swayze — who has turned his New Mexico Rancho de Días Alegres (Ranch of Happy Days) into a wildlife preserve and timber farm — is plotting an epic reality series that follows ''the greatest conservationist brains in the world'' around the globe in search of answers to questions like ''What species can be saved right now?''
As for the answers EW's after: (1) He won't be participating in any straight-to-DVD Road House or Point Break sequels, although he would consider resurrecting Dalton or Bodhi for a TV series; (2) there are more soft-shoe flicks in his future — he did, after all, promise the late Gene Kelly that he'd ''carry on his legacy''; (3) he recently appeared on ABC's Dancing With the Stars, but nobody's pitched him So You Wanna Dance With Patrick Swayze. Yet. ''It looks like it's coming,'' he says with a certain amount of resignation. Here's our pitch: Pal Joey on Broadway. Now, that would be a hot ticket.
