NAMES IN THE NEWS : Swayze Gives It Up in ‘Ghost’

Patrick Swayze says his new double-hanky tear-jerker “Ghost” was his heaviest role ever.

“I had to watch my death. I had to see myself in the coffin. I had to be present for my funeral--really sort of blew me out of the water,” the actor said in an interview taped for broadcast today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

In the movie, Swayze plays Sam Wheat, a New York banker who gets killed, leaving behind fiancee Molly, portrayed by Demi Moore.

Swayze, who hit it big in the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing,” said he drew on his own grief upon his father’s death in 1982 to play an earthbound ghost.

“ ‘Ghost’ was the first movie I’ve ever done that really changed me as a person because it’s about taking the love with you after you die,” he said.