Patrick Swayze will live on in those late night movies that you probably didn’t like when they were first released, but that you’ll happily stop and watch when you’re suffering from a nasty bout of insomnia and you’ve surfed your way through two-thirds of your cable channels. Road House and Dirty Dancing, for example. And, happily, he’ll live on in some good movies, too, like Donnie Darko and (okay, I’m not sure it’s good, but, damn, it’s good) Red Dawn.

Patrick Swayze, the hunky actor who danced his way into moviegoers’ hearts with “Dirty Dancing” and then broke them with “Ghost,” died Monday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57.

“Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today with family at his side after facing the challenges of his illness for the last 20 months,” said a statement released Monday evening by his publicist, Annett Wolf. Swayze died in Los Angeles, Wolf said, but declined to give further details.

Sympathy goes out to his family and friends. He seemed to be a genuinely nice guy who handled his cancer with more grace than I could manage.

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