RIGHT ON TRACK

Since the end of his run on Grey’s Anatomy, PATRICK DEMPSEY climbed the podium at Le Mans, saved his marriage, and refined his acting career. On the eve of his return to U.S. television, he reflects on keeping the pace in Hollywood for over 30 years.

- ALEX BHATTACHARJI

''Is that the top? Or was it back there?” Patrick Dempsey asks, alternately gesturing forward and behind him. “I guess it could be right here,” he says, shrugging, a moment later. “Thing is, when you’re at the top you never know.”

Dempsey delivers this bit of perspective astride a dirt-caked mountain bike in the hills above Malibu, CA. While his Zen koan-like observation may operate on any number of levels, the 54-year-old’s eyes are trained on a literal one: the spiny ridgeline we’ve been riding, a four-mile and 1,000-vertical foot climb from the Pacific. Decked out in a black camo kit, Dempsey drops his mask momentarily to take a sip from his water bottle, then breaks into a smile. “What do you say?” he asks, nodding ahead to where the trail curls behind a rock outcrop. “Let’s go. I really want to see what’s around that bend.”

He peels off, leaving me and a spray of scree trailing behind him.

Nearly four decades into a career punctuated by high peaks and deep troughs, Dempsey is eager for whatever comes next—a rise, a fall, or a plateau. Five years since leaving the long-running hit Grey’s Anatomy, Dempsey returns to TV this fall in a series about European financiers called Devils. He looks almost unchanged from when he first shot to small-screen stardom: the same square jaw and piercing blue eyes; the only perceptible difference a shock of gray in the still-full head of hair atop his still-fit anatomy. But, it’s clear he’s no longer McDreamy—as he alter ego Doctor Derek Shepherd was known—the personification of a woman’s idealized man.