He was married once before and is fairly taciturn when asked about it. He was 21 and his first wife, Rocky Parker, also his manager, was 48; there were infidelities on both sides, he has said. It ended in divorce after seven years. "I learned a lot from that relationship," he says. "And you know, it was many years ago now."

A failed marriage and a mercurial occupation aren't the only things contributing to Dempsey's outlook. He's a Maine boy at heart—"happy in the rain and the snow," he says. His father, William, was a reserved but caring man. Dempsey grew up in a series of small towns in inland Maine—Turner and Buckfield and Lewiston—where he attended St. Dominic's Regional High School. His father, a jockey, had already retired when Patrick was a boy, supplementing the family's income with a bottle-redemption center and a stake in a bar. "He was much older—different generation—and he died when I was 18. But he was always around when I was a kid, and he was the coach of the baseball team. He'd go skiing with me and he was always extremely supportive," says Dempsey. "Very quiet. Didn't speak a lot."

He came to know his mom, Amanda, gradually, most crucially around the period from 1996 to 1999, when she twice fought off ovarian cancer. He returned to Maine to help his two older sisters look after her, and while there, he bought neighboring houses for Mom and himself on a quiet cove in the lobstering town of Harpswell. When a local reporter visited her, he found her "as down-home as a slice of warm apple pie," and a neighbor described Patrick as "a regular old country boy, very pleasant. We sat together and talked a lot."

Dempsey met Jillian, his wife of eight years, when he walked into the salon where she worked as a stylist. (She has since become an entrepreneur in the cosmetics business.) "I knew from the moment I saw her that I had a connection to her I couldn't quite describe. I thought she was absolutely beautiful and had amazing eyes," he says. "Marriage is great. It's a euphoric, blissful, agonizing, challenging place."

After his ups and downs in the film business, Dempsey permits himself guarded optimism about both the family-friendly Enchanted and Made of Honor (due out next spring), the full-on romantic comedy that saw him photographed, to the delectation of photo services who shopped the pictures around the world, in a pink dress. "There's a core audience who's watching Grey's Anatomy who expects something from you when they go to the box office, so you want to deliver that," says Dempsey. "I'm going to wait to see what happens with these movies, and we'll make choices after that. You can't get too far ahead of yourself."

It has been nearly a year since the Grey's Anatomy fracas that led to the firing of Isaiah Washington after he referred to cast member T. R. Knight as a "faggot." Dempsey, who had his own nose-to-nose altercation with Washington, says it's a lighter atmosphere all around: "It's fun to work in a group when everybody has a moment to mess around and to play. This season, I've had a lot of scenes with Eric [Dane, his rival Dr. Mark Sloan]. They've become friends again, and it's been fun to be playful." As for the loss of Washington, Dempsey says, "Well, I'm still waiting for it to pass. I think it's a sad day, all the way around. It's a shame, a big waste. The role of Burke was an extremely important character that is no more. And that's, I think…I think the biggest tragedy."

With various Hollywood creative guilds threatening to go on strike this year, Dempsey may be one of the few stars who's quietly rooting for a work stoppage: "I think I'll just be very careful in what I choose to do next, because I need to spend time with my family. And I really want to dedicate a year to racing a full season and see what happens there. There are certain goals I want to reach, and at this point, it's really satisfying to go and race."

For Dempsey, racing has become more than a pastime; he admits he's "getting deeper and deeper as the years go by. It's such a nice departure from Los Angeles and Hollywood. I've sort of become friends with these guys over the past five years. Because of the huge response to the show and all the attention from the female population, my male camaraderie is so much more valuable because it doesn't threaten the marriage, it supports the marriage."

 For the sake of racing, Dempsey says he needs to keep himself fitter than ever before. "The physical aspects of car racing are so demanding that I need to train," he says. "I'm going back full circle to that period in my life as a kid when I wanted to be an Olympic skier. I do a lot of running and training. Cycling has been tremendous for my psyche, to get out in nature, the speed of it and the agility needed and the stamina. Having children in my forties, I want to be healthy for them when I get older. I have to keep myself together. There's a reward when I can pick up my daughter and not pull my back out."

When I ask him about rivalries with other drivers—as seen almost weekly on TV among the NASCAR guys—Dempsey says, "You have good races and you have bad races. You make mistakes, and sometimes you have contact, which at the end of the day can hurt you, because it can puncture a tire or you can blow out your brakes. You don't want to hurt people. You don't want to take anybody out, but when you do, it's always a bad feeling."

He's out on the track with people who do this as their livelihood, so the question should be asked: Is Dempsey a danger junkie? "You know, there are a lot of great drivers. What they can do compared with what I can do is phenomenal. You have to go out with your own personal goals. And when you improve and you've picked up speed, it's extremely satisfying. But you're fighting for tenths of a second, you know, little things. And it becomes…it's a race within yourself to stay, I think, aggressively calm in the car and not allow your emotions to overwhelm you to the point where you start to make mistakes."

At that moment, his cell phone purrs. "It's the show," he says. "A call time for scene six tomorrow. I'm supposed to take my daughter to school. She just started. See, that's the problem with this scheduling. This is what I can't stand. It's constantly changing, and just try to express that to your daughter when she's expecting you. It's hard enough for my wife, who is a saint for putting up with me to begin with. But how can you stay dependable?"

Raising kids, he allows, is a "constant challenge, a humbling process. You're trusted, so you question yourself every moment of the day: Am I making her a better person? Am I making him a better person? Am I loving enough? Am I strong enough? Am I strict enough? Am I compassionate? Am I allowing her to get away with too much? Is she spoiled? Is that my mother's voice or is it my voice?"

These are the questions of a concerned father, but Dempsey is also a husband. Speaking about the need for intimacy, he brings the same self-scrutiny to his marriage: "Do I have enough time with my wife? Are we still being lovers as well as parents?"

In May 2007, he bought a farm in Maine, a purchase that he says was a turning point in his thinking. "It was like, you know what? I'm done. I now know what I want. I can be perfectly happy living in the country, having a little farm, and working occasionally. If someone calls, I'll go to work, but I am tired of going and putting myself through hell just to get into the room to be prepared, to be professional, and to let go of any kind of anger or frustration and then not getting the part." 

So there is Dempsey's dilemma: To find the balance between work and love, between present and future. "Do you sacrifice now so you can have a lot of time later? So you can have the financial stability to go, 'You know what? I'm at home now. I'm going to take you to football practice, to ballet, and to horse riding. I'll be there and I'll watch you.' I guess that's the dream that everyone wants. I guess success is how much free time you have."