Lisa Niemi Biography

Lisa Anne Happaniemi Swayze DePriso, popularly known as Lisa Niemi, is an eminent American actress, dancer, film director and producer. Her best claim to fame is being the widow of the late Hollywood actor, Patrick Swayze, with whom she was married to for more than three decades. Lisa has carved out a successful career as an actress, filmmaker, and director, thanks to her nearly four decades of association with the tinsel town. She shared screen space with her late husband in a string of movies including ‘Steel Dawn’, ‘One Last Dance’, ‘Beat Angel’, ‘Letters from a Killer’, and ‘Next of Kin’. She developed an affinity for acting from an early age, and at the age of 10, she enrolled in the Alley Theater in Houston to begin training. She bagged a part in the standalone TV episode, ‘Two Boys’ produced by Paramount Pictures as a 10-year old which incidentally was her debut small screen appearance. She moved onto the Houston Music Theater to hone her acting skills, appearing in multiple children musicals for four years in a row. Armed with a degree in ‘Performing Arts’, she relocated to New York from Houston, and started training as a danseuse, performing as a ballet dancer, under the aegis of Harkness & Joffrey Ballet. She restarted acting and appeared in numerous Broadway productions before moving to Los Angeles with Patrick Swayze where she experimented with scriptwriting, moviemaking and authoring skills.