Like they did everything else through 34 years of marriage, Patrick Swayze and wife Lisa Niemi battled his struggle with pancreatic cancer the only way they knew how: side by side. “I would be happy if he’s around for a long time, and I am being whatever I need to be to help him do that,” she told PEOPLE in April. But after a Stage IV diagnosis in February 2008, the risk-taking actor – who told Barbara Walters he had lived “159 lives” – finally died on Sept. 14 at the age of 57.

“Dirty Dancing just blew the lid off my career,” Swayze (with costar Jennifer Grey) told PEOPLE in 2007 about starring as hip-swiveling dance instructor Johnny Castle in the 1987 box-office smash. The iconic film – which grossed $170 million worldwide – made him a bona fide heartthrob to all ages. “I constantly have some old lady pinching me on the rear,” he said. “I turn around and see blue hair running back to a group of other blue hairs going, ‘I did it, Martha! I pinched him!’”

Born prematurely in Houston on Aug. 18, 1952, the outgoing Swayze (circa 1960) showed an early talent for performing. As the oldest of five children, he grew up a student of choreographer mom Patsy’s ballet school and the son of former champion rodeo cowboy Jesse. “I can’t recall a time in my life when I wasn’t dancing,” he once said. Even when bullies taunted him with names like “Twinkle Toes” and “Sissy,” wrote author Wendy Leigh in the 2009 biography Patrick Swayze: One Last Dance, he refused to be intimidated – and picked up martial arts and high school football.