Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#12287
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Patrick Swayze represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 36 years in, and Patrick is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Patrick Swayze appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Patrick. Donnie Darko is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Richard Kelly, Kathryn Bigelow, Jerry Zucker and others, Patrick Swayze helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Donnie Darko (2001) as Jim Cunningham · To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) as Vida Boheme · Dirty Dancing (1987) as Johnny Castle
Career snapshot
Ranked #12287 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1983–2019
Career length
36 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
Donnie Darko
Average Nutevio score
7.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Donnie Darko
Most frequent director
Richard Kelly
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Richard Kelly
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 45m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.3
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.9
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1990s
7.3 average MV
The 1990s are where the work and the material meet. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, Point Break, Ghost — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1990s
7.3
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1990s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Road House, Dirty Dancing, Red Dawn.
Most productive era
1980s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.03 films | 7.51 film | 7.91 film | — |
| Action | 6.62 films | 7.21 film | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.62 films | 7.32 films | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 7.51 film | 6.01 film | — |
| Crime | 7.11 film | 7.21 film | — | — |
| Romance | 7.41 film | 7.31 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1983The Outsiders
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Darrel Curtis.
Career peak
1995To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance
2001Donnie Darko
7.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
10 of 10 films
as Sam Wheat
Directed by Jerry Zucker
as Jim Cunningham
Directed by Richard Kelly
as Johnny Castle
Directed by Emile Ardolino
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Vida Boheme
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)
Performance score8.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Vida Boheme gives Patrick Swayze a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Sam Wheat
Ghost (1990)
Performance score7.9
Ghost asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sam Wheat is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Jim Cunningham
Donnie Darko (2001)
Performance score7.7
Donnie Darko asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Jim Cunningham is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Johnny Castle
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Performance score7.7
Dirty Dancing asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Johnny Castle is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Vida Boheme
Start here. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar is the clearest statement of what Patrick Swayze does — accessible, 108 minutes, and rated 7.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Patrick at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Dirty Dancing (1987)
Keeps the drama register of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ghost (1990)
Keeps the romance register of Dirty Dancing but asks for a colder reading of it.
Donnie Darko (2001)
Keeps the fantasy register of Ghost but asks for a colder reading of it.
I Am Patrick Swayze (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Donnie Darko — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Francis Ford Coppola
Director
1 film together
Notably The Outsiders
John Milius
Director
1 film together
Notably Red Dawn
Emile Ardolino
Director
1 film together
Notably Dirty Dancing
Rowdy Herrington
Director
1 film together
Notably Road House
Jerry Zucker
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghost
Kathryn Bigelow
Director
1 film together
Notably Point Break
Richard Kelly
Director
1 film together
Notably Donnie Darko
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Richard Kelly
Director
1 film together · 7.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Donnie DarkoEmile Ardolino
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Dirty DancingJerry Zucker
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GhostKathryn Bigelow
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Point BreakFrancis Ford Coppola
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The OutsidersRowdy Herrington
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Road HouseJohn Milius
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Red DawnSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Donnie Darko
as Jim Cunningham
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Dirty Dancing
as Johnny Castle
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Donnie Darko
as Jim Cunningham
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Donnie Darko
as Jim Cunningham
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
as Vida Boheme
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Patrick Swayze has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
36 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Donnie Darko
as Jim Cunningham
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Donnie Darko
as Jim Cunningham
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Ghost
as Sam Wheat
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Donnie Darko
as Jim Cunningham
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Point Break
as Bodhi / Mask President
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Point Break
as Bodhi / Mask President
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Outsiders
as Darrel Curtis
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Donnie Darko
as Jim Cunningham
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Al Pacino
Works with the same directors — shared collaborators
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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