Hollywood star Patrick Swayze, who captivated audiences with his smouldering, muscular dancing style in “Dirty Dancing” and revealed his sensitive, defiant side in “Ghost” died late on Monday after a 20-month battle against pancreatic cancer.

The 57-year-old Texas-born actor died after suffering complications from the illness, according to his publicist Annett Wolf. He passed away peacefully in his Los Angeles home with his family at his side, said Wolf said in a statement.

Swayze shot to international fame with his 1987 hit “Dirty Dancing” when the explosive combination of his hunky physique and feline movements set to the Oscar-winning tune “Time of my Life” propelled a low budget movie into one of the year’s highest-grossing films.

Three years later, he played the role of a murdered man who, even in the afterlife, refused to abandon his wife until he was reassured of her safety in “Ghost”. The scene of Swayze and his co-star Demi Moore moulding pottery together with the Righteous Brothers hit “Unchained Melody” crooning in the backdrop, lives as one of cinema’s most romantic moments.

“There is a saying about Patrick Swayze that he danced his way to viewers’ hearts with ‘Dirty Dancing’ and broke them with ‘Ghost’,” said FRANCE 24’s Los Angeles correspondent Gallagher Fenwick.

Battle with cancer: ‘Going through hell’

In January 2008, Swayze was diagnosed with advanced stage-four pancreatic cancer, with medical experts giving him only a one percent chance of surviving longer than five years.

Days later, in an interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters, Swayze admitted with characteristic candour that he was “going through hell”. But, he added he was just “at the beginning of my battle. And I expect it to be a long hard battle, one that I'm gonna' win according to certain rules -- and the rules that the cancer isn't going away."

Swayze had been starring in US TV show “The Beast” since his diagnosis and he had also planned to write a memoir with his wife, Lisa Niemi, a dancer and actress.

The son of a dance teacher and an engineering drafter, Swayze grew up in Texas before moving to New York City for dance training at the prestigious Harkness Ballet and Joffrey schools.

With his Texas twang, his finely chiselled bone structure and his polished dancing, Swayze brought an unusual combination of skills to the screen, earning him numerous Golden Globe nominations in the course of his career.

‘RIP P Swayze’

Hours after his death, tributes from numerous Hollywood stars he encountered in the course of his career came pouring in.

In an interview with the US weekly “People” magazine, Jennifer Grey, who played his naïve, inexperienced dancing student in “Dirty Dancing”, said Swayze was a "real cowboy with a tender heart," who was so fearless doing his own stunts that "it was not surprising to me that the war he waged on his cancer was so courageous and dignified."

Film editor Greg Kilday said Swayze as a performer was "in the tradition of a performer like Gene Kelly, who invested dance and romance with a real masculine athletic appeal".

And in a posting on Twitter, Ashton Kutcher, husband of Swayze’s “Ghost” co-star Demi Moore, simply wrote, "RIP P Swayze."