Someone as multitalented as Patrick Swayze does not allow anything to cut down his enthusiasm when he really wants something.

Whether it’s dancing, acting, or songwriting… Patrick Swayze proves to be as good at all of them. In his youth, he also practiced multiple artistic and athletic skills such as ice skating or classical ballet.

That is why no one should be surprised to hear that the 55-year-old actor found it in himself to ignore the terrible disease that threatens him and begin working on a new cable television series rather than feeling sorry for himself.

Patrick Swayze will star in the A&E drama “The Beast,” portraying an FBI agent whom he describes as “multi-layered, unpredictable and downright entertaining,” making this his first project since being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The actor was diagnosed with the disease in March and he has been undergoing treatment since then. The doctors were very encouraging, saying he responded very well. Cancer experts praised the actor’s decision to continue working, saying that doing something he enjoyed would actually improve his mental condition.

"I don't think anything that he is doing is going to make things worse," said Dr. Andrew Warshaw, surgeon-in-chief at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, as quoted by ABC News. "It is very common to talk about fighting your cancer. ... But if you decide you are going to feel better, to some extent you can make that happen."

Patrick Swayze shot the pilot episode for the series in December 2007, before he was diagnosed. After he found out about the illness, Swayze underwent a course of chemotherapy and some experimental drug treatments and now he and his executives from A&E, the network which will air the series, announced he was able to play in the production as they had previously established. This is a very optimistic and confident decision, if we take into consideration the high mortality rate for pancreatic cancer. Patients diagnosed with the disease are usually given only a few months to live. Patients that outlast that period of time, only have a 5 percent chance of being alive in five years, The National Cancer Institute reports.

The A&E show, titled “The Beast,” will be filmed in Chicago. It is slated for an early 2009 debut. A&E has picked up the series for 13 hour-long episodes.
“Chicago is an amazing, untapped city. I can’t wait to get to work on this,” Patrick Swayze said.

In a 2005 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Patrick Swayze said he had decided 10 years earlier to enjoy screwing up his career. By that he meant he would only accept to play interesting and original characters, instead of mainstream ones. That’s why he decided to play the drag queen Vida Boheme in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and pedophile Jim Cunningham in Donnie Darko. And that is probably also the reason for which he chose to interpret FBI agent Charles Barker in “The Beast.”

"I have searched for quite a long time to find a character that is this multilayered, unpredictable and downright entertaining as well as a project this current and cutting-edged," Swayze declared in a statement.

The actor and his wife, Lisa Noemi, have recently celebrated 30 years of marriage. They made an unexpected and pleasing public appearance last month, at a Los Angeles Lakers game. It was Patrick Swayze’s first outing since his illness was made public.