Patrick Dempsey became a star playing a handsome hearthrob known as Dr. McDreamy, who saved lives and made hearts flutter, on the long-running medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Now the Maine native is starring in a network TV series for the first time in more than 10 years, in a very different role. In the new Fox series “Memory of a Killer,” he ends lives, as an assassin for hire. But he’s also a widower, a doting dad and still very handsome, living a quiet life in upstate New York. He continues to spend time in hospitals, as his character is dealing with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and is starting to forget things, like where he put his gun (Spoiler: It was in the refrigerator).

Talk about a complex character.

“I want to be able to go out and test myself,” Dempsey, 60, told the New York Times recently while discussing the show. “I have a dark side to my nature. I just hadn’t been able to express it.”

“Memory of a Killer” premiered on Fox Sunday and will air Mondays at 9 p.m., streaming on Hulu. The cast includes Michael Imperioli, best-known as Christopher Moltisanti on “The Sopranos,” as Dempsey’s boss. Odeya Rush plays his grown-up daughter, who thinks he’s a copy machine salesman. Because that’s what he says he is.

The first episode establishes Dempsey as a cross between Batman and James Bond. He’s wearing a crewneck sweater and puffy vest while driving a boring beige SUV in his quaint hometown of Hudson Springs (filmed in Perry Point, Ontario, Canada). He enters the garage of a hidden lair in the middle of nowhere, filled with guns, computers, finely-tailored black suits and a black Porsche. Within minutes he’s dressed in black, speeding away in the Porsche to kill somebody in a New York City restaurant.

Dempsey is an accomplished race car driver, having competed all over the world, and he played a race car driver in the 2023 film “Ferrari.” So he looks pretty comfortable in the extensive chase scenes in his new show’s first episode.

Dempsey was not available to talk about the show with the Press Herald, according to his representatives. But the Lewiston-area native, who has a home in Kennebunkport, spends a lot of time talking to Mainers, for a good cause.

Dempsey has long been known in Maine for his philanthropy. He started the Dempsey Center, which has locations in Lewiston and Westbrook, in 2008 to help cancer patients and their families. His mother’s battle with cancer was the inspiration for the center. Amanda Dempsey died in 2014 after a 17-year battle with cancer. Dempsey has raised millions of dollars for cancer treatment, most notably through the annual Dempsey Challenge fundraising bike ride in Maine each fall. Dempsey often rides in the event himself.

Dempsey grew up in the central Maine towns of Turner and Buckfield, north of Lewiston, and attended St. Dominic’s Regional High School. But he struggled with dyslexia in school and dropped out before graduating to pursue acting in New York. By his early 20s, he had starred in several 80s teen comedies, including “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “Loverboy.” But he’s best known for his role on “Grey’s Anatomy,” from 2005 to 2015.

About a decade ago, Dempsey bought a fieldstone house in Kennebunkport known as Rocky Pastures, once owned by noted Maine author Kenneth Roberts and built in the 1930s. He told the Press Herald in 2022 that he tried to come to Maine about once a month, but was still based in California because his twin sons were still in high school. People and businesses in the Kennebunkport area often post photos on their social media of Dempsey around town, visiting with folks. In June of 2025 he posed for a photo with Joanne Wheeler Fishman of Kennebunk at New Morning Natural Foods.

 “I’ve been working on the restoration and keeping the land undeveloped,” Dempsey told the Press Herald in 2022, discussing his Kennebunkport property. “We’ve got a lot of deer and turkeys coming through, and it’s nice that the community uses the field in the winter for cross-country skiing.”

When Dempsey attended the Dempsey Challenge in September with wife, Jillian, he told the Sun Journal that in his mind the Dempsey Center was owned by the community, a community he is very grateful for.

“I have had the opportunity to travel the world and I appreciate it (coming home) now more than ever,” he said.