Focus : Dempsey’s Challenge : ACTOR WAS HESITANT TO PLAY J.F.K. IN ‘RECKLESS YOUTH’--THEN HE TOOK CHARGE

Patrick Dempsey admits he wasn’t the producer’s first choice to play John F. Kennedy in “JFK: Reckless Youth,” ABC’s two-part adaptation of Nigel Hamilton’s best-selling account of the late 35th President’s early years.

“They actually turned me down the first time I went in,” confesses Dempsey, 27, looking very unpresidential with unruly curly brown hair and goatee. An unsmoked cigarette nestled behind his right ear.

Harry Winer, the producer and director of “Reckless Youth,” was familiar with Dempsey’s work in the comedies “In the Mood,” “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Loverboy.”

“My association with Patrick was this young coming-of-age actor with a great deal of humor, warmth and charm,” Winer says. “He literally was the first person we met. We had had our arms twisted to meet him because he was so contrary to what I expected in the image of John Kennedy.”

Still, there was an intensity and maturity to Dempsey that Winer hadn’t witnessed on film. “Nevertheless, the image I held of him lingered,” Winer says. “So we went and looked at a host of other people, and then came back and revisited the possibility with a lot of encouragement to reconsider Patrick.”

Dempsey says he initially was hesitant to play Kennedy. Even after his first meeting with Winer and executive producer Judith Polone, he “wasn’t convinced” he was right for the part. But he decided to pursue the role.

“I thought it would be a real good exercise to sort of work on the accent and the character, and also get a chance to play with some prosthetics and see if they would work--if we would get closer to (Kennedy’s look),” Dempsey says. A few weeks later, he went in for another audition, performing one of Kennedy’s monologues from the film. He was offered the part on the spot.

Winer says he was impressed with the actor’s preparation for the second audition. “Patrick started researching the book and the character, started pulling together films, home movies that were tracked down,” Winer says. “Then he started coming up with a couple of ideas of how he might effect the image of Jack Kennedy.”

When Winer and Polone met Dempsey the first time, the actor had shoulder-length hair. “The first thing he did was have his hair cut,” Winer says. “The fellow who came to greet me was a total transformation of the person I had first met. He had proceeded in three weeks to lose 20 pounds because as a young man Jack Kennedy had been constantly ill and was very slight. It made me realize with this sort of commitment, I could only be three steps ahead of anybody else I would cast.”

After he was offered the part, Dempsey still couldn’t decide if he should do it. “Everybody has a story about J.F.K.,” he says. “It’s like everybody knows him. He’s their friend.”

So why did he finally decide to tackle the role?

“Hubris,” Dempsey says, laughing. “I thought it was a great opportunity to be Jack Kennedy for eight weeks.”

Adapted by William Broyles Sr., the drama explores Kennedy’s rather mischievous and womanizing high school and college years; his controversial love affair in the early ‘40s with journalist Inga Arvad, who was suspected by J. Edgar Hoover to be a German spy; and his relationships with his powerful father Joe Sr. (Terry Kinney), his distant, religious mother Rose (Diana Scarwid) and his older brother Joe (Loren Dean). The film also re-creates Kennedy’s heroic exploits aboard PT-109 during World War II.

Once Dempsey accepted the role, he had only two weeks before his scenes began shooting. “It took me a week to get over the panic,” he says, laughing. “Once I got the panic out of the way, I was fine.”

To achieve Kennedy’s flashing smile, Dempsey pasted a plate of teeth to his own. The next step was the late president’s distinctive accent. “Once the accent started coming, we tried to lose it so we got an impression of an accent, a sense of it,” Dempsey says.

Dempsey captured Kennedy’s body language and posture by watching documentaries. “He stood up very straight, he pulled up and had a lot of mannerisms,” the actor says. “He was very still and his movements were isolated. When you saw him from behind, he would always be hunched a lot, which was fascinating. Everybody on the set would say (to me), ‘Would you stand up straight?’ ”

Winer believes the journey Dempsey personally made during the course of the eight-week production parallels the one Kennedy takes in the movie.

“Like Prince Hal,” Winer relates, “he has a wonderful, wild youth. Then at one point in time, somebody hands him an opportunity to assume the mantle of leadership. In order to do so, he’s got to cut ties with the way he’s been conducting himself if he’s going to rise to the challenge of what the next cycle of his life demands.”

“I needed to be challenged,” Dempsey says, adding that doing the movie was like confronting one’s own death. “There was no place to go, so you just sink or swim. I need to do that more often. I have been safe in the past. If I take anything away from the experience it is: Don’t fear. I survived it. I feel much more confident in my ability.”

“JFK: Reckless Youth” airs Sunday and Tuesday at 9 p.m. on ABC.