Patrick Dempsey's 10 Best Movies And TV Shows

The best Patrick Dempsey movies and TV shows include a role in one of the most successful television shows of all time and several dramatic and romantic roles in films. Dempsey actually started his acting career with coming-of-age rom-coms like Can't Buy Me Love and Loverboy before starting to diversify his acting roles to include a mix of dramas and even horror movies to his resume. However, his true breakout role came in the most successful medical drama of all time when he starred as Dr. Dreek Shepherd in Grey's Anatomy, a character who would earn the nickname McDreamy.

While most people know Dempsey from Grey's Anatomy, he parlayed that into a small career as a leading man in rom-coms, although he never reached the level of success on the big screen that he did with his role in the medical drama on the small screen. He had chances to play opposite Reese Witherspoon and Amy Adams. However, in recent years, he has worked to take on a wider variety of roles. While many will only refer to him as McDreramy, there's a lot more to Patrick Dempsey's movie career than that one role.

10 Scream 3 (2000)

Det. Mark Kincaid

The third movie in the Scream franchise saw a complete change in focus for the franchise. Already a series leaning heavily into the meta-horror aspects, this film had a movie about the murders, and that all tied into a new Ghostface arriving to terrorize everyone again (and even to kill Cotton Weary at the start of the film). The movie sees Patrick Dempsey show up as Detective Mark Kincaid, as he is investigating Cotton's murder and looks to ask Gail Weathers (Courteney Cox) some questions about the murder.

The film sees Dempsey's Kincaid join the cast of characters as one of the new heroes alongside Gail, Dewey (David Arquette), and Sidney (Neve Campbell). This also effectively changed the dynamic from young adults hunted by Ghostface to a group of adults having to survive the serial killer. While it looked like Kincaid was becoming a new regular cast member, there were 11 years between this and the fourth movie, and Dempsey's character was written out of the series by then.

9 Thanksgiving (2023)

Sheriff Eric Newlon

In 2007, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez co-directed the movie Grindhouse, which was two films separated by fake exploitation movie trailers in between them. Of these trailers, two of the four were made into actual movies, with Rodriguez's Machete and Jason Eisener's Hobo with a Shotgun. While it took 17 years, Eli Roth finally made a third one into a movie, with Thanksgiving. One of the main cast members in the horror film was Patrick Dempsey, who played Sheriff Eric Newlon.

This was also a rare villain turn for Dempsey.

The film has a man dressed in a Pilgrim costume with a John Carver mask starting to kill people over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The sheriff is helping to investigate the murders, but it is the young adults in the town who finally stumble upon the truth, and they have to fight for their lives to get out of the horrific situation alive. Critics gave the film a surprising 84% fresh Rotten Tomatoes rating, praising the humor and the over-the-top gore. This was also a rare villain turn for Dempsey.

8 Outbreak (1995)

Jimbo Scott

A decade after his start as a teen heartthrob and a decade before his breakout turn on Grey's Anatomy, Patrick Dempsey was still trying to find his place in Hollywood as an adult actor. In 1995, he joined Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, and Donald Sutherland in the medical disaster film Outbreak. This movie followed an outbreak in Zaire that eventually made its way to a small town in California, which the government quickly quarantined and shut off from the world as they fought to find a cure.

Patrick Dempsey joined the supporting cast, along with the likes of Cuba Gooding Jr. As for Dempsey, he played one of the most critical roles in the film, as Jimbo Scott. He is an employee at an animal testing facility and steals a white-headed capuchin monkey that is host to the virus. He is infected with the virus and releases the monkey into the woods outside the Palisades, setting loose the virus and almost causing a worldwide catastrophe. Outbreak was a surprising box office success.

7 Can’t Buy Me Love (1987)

Ronald Miller

Many fans didn't get to know Patrick Dempsey until he became McDreamy on Grey's Anatomy. However, for people of a certain age, Dempsey was a teenage heartthrob in the late 1980s romantic comedy scene. His most successful film during that stage of his career was the 1987 rom-com Can't Buy Me Love. Dempsey played Ronald Miller, a high school nerd living in Arizona. He makes a deal with a popular cheerleader to give her $1,000 to pretend to be his girlfriend to make him look "cool" and improve his standing in the town.

Soon, she helps teach him how to dress cooler, and he trades in his loyal friends for the more shallow, cool kids in the town. Soon, Cindy starts to grow attracted to him for real, while he starts to lose who he really is in the guise of being "popular." For many rom-com fans, this was the original movie with the male lead riding off on a lawnmower with the girl of his dreams. At the Young Artist Awards, Dempsey won the Best Young Actor in a Motion Picture—Comedy.

6 Dexter: Original Sin (2024-)

Aaron Spencer

In 2024, Showtime brought back serial killer Dexter Morgan in the prequel series Dexter: Original Sin. This series takes place 15 years before the original series started and stars Patrick Gibson as a young Dexter and Christian Slater as his father, Harry Morgan. Fans of the original series might remember that it was Harry who taught Dexter to hide the Dark Passenger within and only use his urges to kill people who deserve it, such as other serial killers and people who seem to slip by justice. This series tells that story.

Dempsey is a nice addition to the Dexter cast and delivers the same great performance that fans have gotten used to over the years.

Dexter is getting his start as a forensic intern when the series starts. Patrick Dempsey plays Aaron Spencer, the captain of the homicide division at Miami Metro Police Department, who works with Dexter's dad, Harry. Since he was close friends with Harry, he also had a soft spot for Dexter, not knowing what kind of person the younger Morgan really was. Dempsey is a nice addition to the Dexter cast and delivers the same great performance that fans have gotten used to over the years.

5 Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016)

Jack Qwant

In 2001, Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones's Diary featured Bridget in a love triangle with Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. That twisted triangle continued three years later in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Hugh Grant's Daniel had thrown in the towel by the end of that second movie, and Bridget married Mark. In 2016, she was back in Bridget Jones's Baby, with Patrick Dempsey replacing Hugh Grant as newcomer Jack Qwant and Bridget divorced from Mark. However, while at Daniel's wake, she sleeps with Jack and Mark and becomes pregnant.

This is similar to what fans have come to expect from the franchise, from the awkward situations to the misunderstandings to Bridget ending up with Mark at the end, yet again. However, Patrick Dempsey is extremely charming in his role as Jack, and the film never veers off track by making either of the love interests unnecessarily mean or discontent. Critics praised the film, and a fourth movie will arrive in 2025, albeit without Dempsey returning. However, Hugh Grant will be back (he survived his apparent death in the last film).

4 Ferrari (2023)

Piero Taruffi

Ferrari is a biopic about Enzo Ferrari's life and career. Directed by Michael Mann, the film stars Adam Driver as Ferrari, who is in a tough spot in his life. He deals with a tragedy, the danger of losing his company, and a fractured marriage. Then, he sets off on a 1,000-mile race across Italy. Joining Driver in the cast is a list of great actors, including Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Jack O'Connell, and Patrick Dempsey. The latter actor plays Piero Taruffi, an Italian race car driver who raced against the Ferrari team in this long-distance race.

The race went his way, and Taruffi won the race and beat the Ferrari team while actually driving a Ferrari 315 S. While the film was set to stream on Showtime, Neon released it theatrically just in time for awards season, and it ended up receiving high praise, named one of the top ten films of 2023 by the National Board of Review. It ended up as a box office flop, although it received five Satellite Award nominations, and Michael Mann was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival.

3 Sweet Home Alabama (2002)

Andrew Hennings

Sweet Home Alabama

PG-13

Comedy

Romance

Release Date: September 27, 2002
Runtime: 109 minutes
Director: Andy Tennant
Writers: Douglas J. Eboch, C. Jay Cox

Cast

Reese Witherspoon
Patrick Dempsey
Josh Lucas
Candice Bergen

Fashion designer Melanie Carmichael is engaged to the hottest guy in town, the son of New York's mayor. However, her past is full of secrets, including Jake, the boy she married when she was a high school student. Jake refuses to divorce her and Melanie travels to Alabama to confront her past.

Main Genre: Romantic Comedy

In 2002, Patrick Dempsey joined Reese Witherspoon in the romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama. Witherspoon plays a New York fashion designer who "escaped" from her hometown in Pigeon Creek. Alabama. She has changed her last name to hide her Southern roots and has changed herself to fit in better in the high-society scene. She is now engaged to the wealthy Andrew Hennings (Dempsey), but she is still married to her estranged husband, who she left years before but never finalized the divorce because he wouldn't sign the papers.

She has to return to Pigeon Creek to get the divorce papers signed so she can get married, but Jake (Josh Lucas) makes things more complicated for her than she could have imagined. The movie is about the fact that someone can never really leave their family behind, and there is also a side story where Andrew, a good person, has too much baggage thanks to his family's expectations. It is a surprising rom-com with no real bad guy but three people who have to figure out their place in life.

2 Enchanted (2007)

Robert Philip

Enchanted is a Disney film that pays homage to the Disney Princess animated films that came before it. It starts as an animated film with an evil Queen named Andalusia (Susan Sarandon), who will lose her power if her stepson, Prince Edward, gets married. When she learns he might marry a young woman named Giselle, she curses her to get sucked into the real world (New York City), where it moves to live action, and Prince Edward is also swept into the world. Amy Adams is Giselle, and James Marsden is Price Edward.

However, the twist here is that Giselle falls in love with a man in the real world, a Manhattan divorce attorney named Robert Philip, played by Patrick Dempsey. He does not believe in true love or happily ever after, which are the mottos that Giselle lives by, and the two have to find a way to prove to each other that they were meant to be together, even if that means Giselle giving up her dream of finding her "prince." Enchanted received three Oscar nominations, all for Best Original Song, while Adams and Dempsey won "Best Kiss" at the MTV Movie Awards.

1 Grey’s Anatomy (2005-2021)

Dr. Derek Shepherd

Grey's Anatomy is the longest-running medical drama series in television history, with 21 seasons and counting. The show's main star has always been Ellen Pompeo as Dr. Meredith Grey. However, this show has an ensemble cast, and the doctors and nurses who pass through the hospital have their own unique storylines, romantic relationships, and drama. Meredith has had several love interests over the show's run, but none have been as important as Patrick Dempsey's Dr. Derek Shepherd.

Dempsey was part of the original cast but left the series in the eleventh season when he died following an auto accident. It was a highly tragic moment since he and Meredith had gotten married, and his death destroyed her life for a long time. It was also shocking for the audience, who had labeled him McDreamy, and the series lost one of its most beloved characters. In his time on the show, Patrick Dempsey was nominated for SAG Awards and Golden Globe Awards and won a SAG Award in 2006 with the rest of the cast.

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