Patrick Dempsey’s prognosis for his film career: promising

Patrick Dempsey sounds like a man coming off a transforming experience. Last week, while driving to the first table read for the upcoming season of “Grey’s Anatomy,” the 45-year-old actor was far more interested in talking about the prognosis of his film career.

“It was such a great experience,” Dempsey said of his work as a conniving villain in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” the Michael Bay film that is now north of $763 million in worldwide grosses. “There’s nothing like being on something where you can feel the wave building the whole time and then just see it explode in the end.”

Dempsey is clearly ready for more explosions. Even as “Grey’s” ramps up toward its eighth season, the man who portrays Dr. Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd said any series that makes it this far runs the risk of “cannibalizing” its past instead of taking risks or delivering moments of true closure.

“After 150 episodes, it’s very easy to repeat one’s self, and I hope we can move forward with these characters so we’re not playing the same beat over and over,” Dempsey said. “That is my concern. It’s really important that you move forward with the relationships and the fans realize what’s happening and where [the relationships] need to go, and they are very smart. The loyal fans who have been with us since Day 1 want to see these characters grow up and not stuck in an adolescent dynamic.”

If Dempsey is ready for the surgeons and nurses of Seattle’s Grace Mercy West Hospital to grow up, he’s also open to the idea of getting in touch with the inner teenager of the American moviegoer. Not only did Dempsey seek out director Bay to get the role of the manipulative Dylan Gould, but the actor has also lobbied openly to play Doctor Strange, a comic-book character that is on the Marvel Studios list of in-development properties.

“It’s something that’s kind of out there, and, you know, I’ve been looking at that,” Dempsey said in an earlier, sit-down interview in Malibu. “It would be a fun one to do. Hopefully, doing something like ‘Transformers’ [shows] I’m not mister-weepy-doctor guy, you know, not McDreamy. You have to change that in people’s view. I’m still hungry for other things.”

It’s an appetite that Dempsey is having a hard time hiding at this point. The Maine native is clearly grateful for “Grey’s” and the career windfall that came with it back in 2005, but the man who has an off-screen passion for race-car driving (he drove a Ferrari F430 GT in the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans and finished ninth in the GT2 class) is weary of being in touch with his feminine side.

“I’ve been known for this one role and for making these light movies,” said Dempsey, referring to films such as “Made of Honor,” “Enchanted” and “Valentine’s Day.” “Those were the opportunities I had and the movie I had to make. But now I just got back from a race this past weekend, and all the guys in the paddock where like, ‘Hey, I went to “Transformers” — it was good to see you in a movie like that.’ It was nice to see them excited.”

Dempsey always has shown a flair for velocity and reflex — during his high school years in Maine, he finished second in a national juggling competition and was state champion in skiing — and the man-of-action approach was a refuge too from the dyslexia that made classrooms such a challenge.

He started on the stage, and craft and charisma led to a Hollywood success as the star of the teen comedy “Can’t Buy Me Love” in 1987. His credits include the 1991 movie “Mobsters” and a memorable role on “Will & Grace,” but it was the part of Dr. Shepherd that took him to a new level of pop-culture prominence.

The ABC medicaldrama created by Shonda Rhimes averaged more than 18 million viewers per week in each of its first three seasons, but last season, that number was at a franchise low of 11.4 million. Still, the season finale pulled in 15 million viewers, beating CBS’ hits “The Mentalist” and “CSI” and Fox’s “Bones.” Rhimes recently tweeted that — despite rumors to the contrary — she expects a ninth season: “Just for the record: This is not the last season of GA. Definitely. Not.”

Last week, Dempsey was more guarded when asked whether the patient would pull through. “Our contracts are up at the end of this year. That’s another thing that’s up in the air. If there is renegotiation, what will that look like? Will people leave or continue on?”

The Italian edition of Vanity Fair quoted Dempsey this year as saying that this season would be his last, but the actor released a follow-up statement that tempered those comments. He may be playing a leverage game or waiting for a big-screen better offer. In any case, his transition to working strictly on the silver screen has not been as fast as the actor would like.

Two years ago, Universal Pictures acquired screen rights to the 2008 novel “The Art of Racing in the Rain” as a starring vehicle for Dempsey, but there remains no director on board. Dempsey also produced and starred in “Flypaper,” a black-comedy heist movie that he took to the Sundance Film Festival in January, but the experience only underlined the difficulty of transitioning to a different medium and tone.

“It worked on some levels,” he said, “and didn’t work on others, but it prepared me to go into ‘Transformers.’”

In “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” Dempsey plays a slippery investment banker and car collector with a bright smile and dark secrets. The character plays a key part in a shadowy conspiracy that adds new facets to the franchise’s ongoing tale of giant alien robots and their war against each other here on Earth and beyond.

Asked how the bad guy Gould would describe McDreamy, Dempsey laughed. “I could get in a lot of trouble with that. ‘Slightly emasculated,’ perhaps — it’s a role written by a woman, and he’s how a woman would want a man to be.”

Bay, who has a passion for fast cars, met Dempsey at a Ferrari event, and the actor pitched himself as the natural choice for the role. The filmmaker says Dempsey and costars Frances McDormand and John Malkovich represent “our effort to take the ensemble up a notch in acting talent.”

Dempsey had never seen a 3-D movie before the premiere and was dazed a bit by the film’s bombast. He sounded like a doctor sizing up a clinical trial when asked about his work in the movie: “It did what it needed to do in order to help move that perception of me around a little bit.”

If the role had been bigger, it might have been the beginning of the end for McDreamy. But Dempsey is too savvy to leave “Grey’s” without a place to go.

“The success I’ve had has allowed me to do something like ‘Transformers’ and bring all those people over to watch something like ‘Transformers,’” the actor said. “One helps the other. You can’t forget that or not be grateful… you have to take a look in the mirror and appreciate where you are,” Dempsey said. “It can all go away very quickly.”

geoff.boucher@latimes.com