WINNIPEG -- "My dad was a cowboy who fell in love with an intensely talented big-city girl," says Patrick Swayze, succinctly summing up a heritage that incorporates the down 'n' dirty with the sublimely artistic.

Swayze's mom is Patsy Swayze, a choreographer whose resume includes credits on the films Urban Cowboy and Thelma & Louise, in addition to being the creator of Houston Jazz Ballet Company. Swayze's dad Jesse, who died in 1982, made a living in the less glamourous field of engineering, but his influence was felt.

"On one hand, I was pulled into sport and rodeo, and my mother (pulled me) into the arts and music and dance," he says.

That genetic heritage has apparently been passed down into Swayze's body of work. His most popular films, Dirty Dancing (1987) and Ghost (1990) are films that emphasize emotion, sensuality, and love. They are, for lack of a better term, pure chick movies and, indeed, the premiere chick movies of the late '80s. (It was on the strength of these two films that Swayze was deemed Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine in 1991.)

But Swayze's other films are decidedly guy-centric. Consider Roadhouse -- a 1989 movie in which his Zen bouncer stood tall among strippers, barroom brawlers, and miscellaneous redneck killers. Viewing it is an express ticket to Testosterone City.

And so it goes with Swayze. One year, he's a tortured doctor finding redemption in City of Joy. Another year, he's the archetypal gun-toting Texas yahoo Pecos Bill in the Disney fantasy Tall Tale.

Without a Word, the film he's producing in town with his actress-wife Lisa Niemi (who wrote and will direct and star in the film), will certainly fall in the sensitive side of the Swayze ledger. It's the story of a trio of dancers who reunite to perform the work of a deceased master choreographer, only to encounter the same problems that caused a blow-up between the trio years earlier.

"They get this idea to resurrect this piece for a gala performance that will keep this dance company alive. So, they bring us back, and we think we're past this and what a lark. But then it takes them on an emotional journey," he says. "It turns into a very poignant love story between my character and Lisa's character."

The title, Swayze adds, will likely change because financial backers want to see the word "Dancing" in the title, a cue to Swayze's 1987 breakthrough movie Dirty Dancing.

In his downtown production office, I share my theory with Swayze, 48, that his movie lineage reflects his genetic lineage, and he smiles good-naturedly.

"I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's true," he says.

Certainly, he freely acknowledges there seems to be no comfortable middle ground in the Swayze cinematic spectrum.

"I'm not interested in the middle, I'm interested in pushing the envelope," he says. He attributes his choices to rebellion against the safe career move.

"As you go along, fame starts to mess with your head, and you have to start battling to make sure Hollywood does not drive your passion and sense of purpose out of you," he says. "I found very quickly that if that happens even one iota in me, it destroys me.

"My agent hates hearing this, but I decided to take a chance and go out on a limb and not play this box office game and go for what my heart tells me to do and take a chance on screwing up my career.

"Because I really believe in my heart that if you do that and have the courage to go there, you may have a chance, by the time you're out of there, to be heralded as a real actor.

"So that's been the method to my madness. I have no method," he says. "And that's the reason for Zen-like surfers and messed-up doctors in India or drag queens (as in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar).

"Whatever blows my skirt up or turns me on, I do it," he says.


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