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Patrick Dempsey Press Conference
Who do you play in Made of Honor?
“I play a guy who is extremely successful because he invented the coffee collar. A coffee collar, you know, they keep you from burning your hand. He’s a bit of a playboy and he’s really good friends with Michelle Monaghan’s character. They’re best friends and she goes off and falls in love with this Scottish man, then comes back and asks him to be the maid of honor. And at that point he realizes how much he really loves her and that she’s the perfect girl for him. Then he has to go and try to figure out how to sabotage the marriage and the wedding.”
Is it surprising to you that after 20 years they’re still making romantic comedies where it was your best friend all along that you should have married?
“Well there’s only so many stories when it comes to that, you know? So I think that was the challenge for us. We were like, ‘Okay, this is a predictable story. How do you go about making it interesting and giving it a new point of view?’ That was the real challenge of how to do that. I like the old Cary Grant movies and that kind of thing, and there are a lot of good comedians right now that I think are much broader so we just tried to get it back to the dialogue and the spontaneity and things like that.
Paul Weiland is the director. He did a movie called Sixty Six. [He’s an] English director and he brought a really nice visual style to it because I think in a lot of romantic comedies the lighting is very flat. The DP did Room with a View and all the Merchant Ivory movies, so there’s a real lush quality visually to it. We shot in England and in the countryside so it brings it out a little bit. So, we’ll see. I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve heard it’s good and I’m sure everybody will let me know soon enough.”
You were very successful when you were young for a period of time. Is it more satisfying being successful now than it was when you were younger? What did you learn from that first bout of fame?
“I think at first you’re not sure you’re worthy of the attention. I think it kind of threw me off. I wasn’t quite prepared for it because I was doing it for the sake of doing it and not worrying about the end result. And then suddenly I don’t think you realize how much responsibility you have once you get into that position of either greenlighting movies or things like that, and the choices that you make. If you’re not making money for people, you’re going to be pushed aside. So I wasn’t really clear on how the business operated.
I don’t think I was really confident in who I was as a person. More so now I feel like I’ve worked my way through a lot of hardship and really appreciate where I’m at right now. I get the joke of the business. I’m under no illusion of what’s going on here and why certain attention is coming my way. You have to be careful of that. There are good people and there are bad people and I think it’s a question of how you just keep your feet on the ground and stay focused and not buy into all the hype.”
