When Patrick Swayze was given a task, not only did he deliver to the fullest but he had a blast in the process, recalls onetime co-star Keanu Reeves about Swayze, who succumbed to cancer on Monday.
“There was some sky diving sequences in this film we did together and as filming was going on it came to be that Patrick was jumping out of airplanes all the time,” Reeves recalled of their 1991 movie “Point Break.” “I think he had over 30 jumps during the course of filming and so the production served him with a cease and desist which he listened to until they got to Hawaii.”
In it, Swayze played a bank-robbing surfer named Bodhi, who forms a bond with the undercover FBI agent (Reeves) assigned to catch him. In the course of the story, “he jumps out of planes and did the flips and falling to the ground and he did it with an open heart,” remembers Reeves.
“He was a beautiful person, an artist,” he adds. “Patrick, he just wanted to experience life and for his work he wanted to take the opportunity of the film and it gave him that sense.”
And he’ll always remember his buddy for lighting up a room with his presence. “I can say what I know that he lived life to the fullest,” says Reeves, 45. “My sympathies and condolences go out to his friends and family.”