About Patrick Dempsey

Adapted from NNDB:

Date of Birth: January 13, 1966

Birthplace: Lewiston, ME

Gender: Male (don't we know it? )

Occupation: Actor, Model, Race Car Driver, Barrista (this one is new! Owns Tully's Coffee)

Best Known for: Acting on Grey's Anatomy as Derek Shepherd. Also known as Dr. McDreamy.

Patrick Dempsey grew up in rural Maine, he competed on the high school skiing team and won the state championship in slalom. Easy to spot at school, he almost always wore a black and white scarf and well known for his juggling act. Patrick joined the schools drama club and acted in school plays. Performed vaudeville with local jugglers and acrobats.

In 1981 Patrick competed at the International Juggler's Association convention at the age of 15. He finished second place in the Junior's category behind an 8 year old boy. This boy was Anthony Gatto, he grew up to perform for Cirque du Soleil, is considered to be one of the most skilled jugglers of all time.

In 1983 Patrick skipped going to school and flew to New York where he auditioned for the touring company of Harvey Fierstein's Broadway hit "Torch Song Trilogy". He lied about his age (which was 17 at the time), landed the role of David and had to ask his parents if they would let him drop out of high school and move to San Francisco to take the role. His very supportive parents said yes. (Not sure I could do that!)

At the age of 23, Patrick got his first film role. He played a Catholic High School student in "Heaven Help Us" He played next to well known actors Andrew McCarthy and Kevin Dillon.

Can't Buy Me Love

It was 1987 when I met the actor via Can't buy me Love. He played Ronald Miller, the geek who paid for his high school crush to pay attention to him, believing that he would become popular when people thought they were together. The film was pretty popular and it earned Patrick some of that attention that Ronald Miller was looking for! He became cover boy material for Teen Beat and a bunch of other Teen magazines of the 80s.

His first TV series was the quickly-cancelled sitcomization of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, titled just plain Fast Times.

Dempsey then starred in several raunchy teen comedies in the late-1980s, including Can’t Buy Me Love, where he played the nerd who hired a cheerleader to pretend to be his girlfriend. The film was popular enough to make Dempsey cover boy material for Teen Beat and all its imitators. Dempsey’s other films in that genre, though, generally failed at the box office — Meatballs III with Sally Kellerman as a dead porn star helping him lose his virginity; In the Mood with Dempsey as a 1940s teenaged lothario who seduced older women; Some Girls with Jennifer Connelly as Dempsey’s girlfriend with two implausibly sexier sisters; and Loverboy with Dempsey providing sexual services to older women under the ruse of delivering pizza “with extra-anchovies.”

With flop after flop, Hollywood producers became less and less interested in hiring Dempsey for prominent roles. In the 1990s, he seemed to disappear, but he was still working on television and in numerous films that either bombed at the box office or went straight to video. His highest-profile roles of the decade were opposite Michael Caine in a TV movie of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and playing the pre-presidential John F. Kennedy in an ABC miniseries, J.F.K.: Reckless Youth. Bitten by a monkey, he had the dubious distinction of being first to die in Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo. Toward the end of the decade, Dempsey turned to modeling to augment his income.

He began reconstructing his career playing the detective in Wes Craven’s Scream 3, then landed recurring roles on Will & Grace and Once & Again. He played Reese Witherspoon’s big-city fiancé in Sweet Home Alabama, but even after that film’s success, Dempsey says he was offered no work for a year. In 2004, he played a wisecracking cartoonist in the suffragette drama Iron Jawed Angels with Hilary Swank as Alice Paul. Despite his long career, the producers of Grey’s Anatomy asked Dempsey to audition only after Rob Lowe said he wasn’t interested in the role. With great ratings and good reviews playing Dr. Derek Shepherd — aka “Dr McDreamy” — on ABC’s medical melodrama, Dempsey is back on the cover of celebrity magazines, again making young girls swoon and older women misty-eyed. (ya think?)

Marital Background:

In 1987, he married acting coach Rochelle “Rocky” Parker, a woman 26 years older than him who had a bit part in his older-woman themed film In the Mood. The marriage made then-21-year-old Dempsey stepfather to Parker’s 22-year-old son. That marriage ended in divorce after seven years, and Dempsey has since re-married and fathered a daughter and twin sons with make-up artist Jill Fink. He loves The Foo Fighters, still skies, collects antiques, and he is part-owner of the Vision Racing team in the open-wheel Indy Racing League and Dempsey Racing for Grand-Am.

• Mother: Amanda Dempsey Lowell (school secretary)
• Father: Howard Lowell (stepfather, organic farmer, married Dempsey’s mother)
• Sister: Mary Dempsey (hospital worker-runs the Dempsey Center)
• Wife: Rochelle ‘Rocky’ Parker (acting coach, b. 1940, m. 1987, div. 1994)
• Son: Corey Parker (stepson, actor, b. 1965)
• Daughter: Noelle Parker (stepdaughter, actress, b. 1969)
• Wife: Jillian Fink (make-up artist, m. 31-Jul-1999, one daughter, two sons)
• Daughter: Tallulah Fyfe Dempsey (b. Jan-2002 with Fink)
• Son: Darby Galen Dempsey (twin b. 1-Feb-2007 with Fink)
• Son: Sullivan Patrick Dempsey (twin b. 1-Feb-2007 with Fink)
• High School: Buckfield High School, Buckfield, ME
• High School: St. Dominic’s Regional High School, Lewiston, ME (dropped out)
• Endorsement of Avon, L'Oreal, and Serengeti