Bodog Beat

Patrick Swayze poses with his wife Lisa during an interview with Barbara Walters. (ABC Images)

"You can bet that I'm going through Hell," Swayze said in his first TV interview on the subject. "And I've only seen the beginning of it. There's a lot of fear here. There's a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, I'm scared. Yeah, I'm angry. Yeah, I'm asking, 'Why me?'"

The 56-year-old actor, best known for his roles on Dirty Dancing and Ghost, realized there was something wrong when he suddenly dropped twenty pounds.

"And then when you see it in the mirror, when all of a sudden, you pull your eyes down and the bottom of your eyes go yellow and jaundice sets in - then you know something's wrong," Swayze said.

Doctors ran tests and found that Swayze had a malignant tumor in his pancreas that had spread to his liver. Most patients with this condition lived less than six months.

"One thing I'm not gonna do is chase staying alive," Swayze said. "You spend so much time chasing staying alive, you won't live."

After the diagnosis, Swayze accepted the role as an undercover FBI agent in The Beast, filming during the week, then flying to L.A. for chemotherapy on the weekends.

"I did find myself, at the end of the day, riding home sort of catching myself with a smile on my face. I'm proud of what I'm doing. There's more I want to do. Lots more. So I'd better get on with it."