The star of Grey’s Anatomy and father-to-be of twins looks back on his exhilarating, gratifying, and, at times, debilitating road to success.
For years, when Patrick Dempsey auditioned, he was greeted with that special yawn Hollywood reserves for onetime gangly teen stars stymied by the leap into adulthood. The decadelong rough patch nearly damaged the actor’s confidence.
“I was getting to a breaking point,” says Dempsey, 41. “It was demoralizing.”
That difficult period informs and deepens Dempsey’s oddly vulnerable Dr. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, making him more than just another soulful TV surgeon with awesome hair. In a revealing talk with LIFE, Dempsey, who recently received a Golden Globe nomination for the show, addressed everything from his rocky return to stardom to why someday—with his makeup-artist wife, Jillian; their 4-year-old daughter, Talula; and their soon-to-be twin sons beside him—he may just walk away from it all.
