LOS ANGELES – Most actors would kill for Patrick Dempsey’s credits.

The 45-year-old Maine native not only stars in the highly rated television series “Grey’s Anatomy” but also boasts the movie hits “Valentine’s Day” and “Enchanted.”

Yet when Dempsey — Dr. McDreamy to his TV admirers — looks at the trajectory of his career, he fears being pigeonholed as the likable, romantic comedy hunk who can’t play anything else.

“If you’re typecast, you really have to take the initiative and change people’s opinions about you,” Dempsey said. “You have to be very proactive.”

So this weekend Dempsey will fly to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, where his movie “Flypaper” will have its world premiere. While Hollywood movers and shakers go to Sundance for any number of reasons — the parties, the swag, the skiing, the deals — any number of actors and filmmakers now head to the nation’s top showcase for independent movies with a distinct professional goal: to reinvent their image.

The belief is that an appearance in a well-received Sundance movie can re-establish a performer as a serious actor — not mere movie star — leading to more meaningful parts.

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“It can be a great place to change your image,” said John Cooper, the festival’s director. But he cautioned that if the movie isn’t well made, any career switch can be torpedoed. “It has to be about the movie first and the agenda later,” he said.

As for Dempsey, he not only stars in “Flypaper,” a dark comedy about two criminal gangs trying to rob the same bank simultaneously, but he also produced the film, helping raise funds and hire a director (“The Lion King’s” Rob Minkoff, also out to re-brand himself). Dempsey plays an unstable man — picture a high-functioning idiot savant — who helps solve the film’s central mystery.

“I’m taking a little bit of a pivot, career-wise,” Dempsey said. “I knew I couldn’t play the romantic comedy card again. I was starting to get pigeonholed, and I started to get frustrated with that. I need to show other people what I can do — or you get stuck in a corner that you can’t get out of.”

Ivanka Trump expecting first child

NEW YORK – Ivanka Trump and her husband are expecting their first child.

The “Celebrity Apprentice” co-host announced Friday on Twitter that she’s pregnant. In 2009, she married Jared Kushner, a New York real estate scion and publisher of The New York Observer weekly newspaper.

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The 29-year-old Trump hasn’t said when she’s due.

Trump, the daughter of Donald Trump and his former wife Ivana, is a vice president at her father’s real estate company and has a jewelry company. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Kushner’s father was a prominent Democratic political donor who pleaded guilty to campaign and tax law violations.

Dylan deal? Publisher ain’t talkin’

LOS ANGELES – Bob Dylan reportedly has signed a six-book deal with Simon & Schuster for two more volumes of his acclaimed “Chronicles, Vol. 1” autobiography, which was tied to his “Theme Time Radio Hour” program that ran for three years on Sirius XM radio and additional works, according to Crain’s New York Business.

A spokeswoman for Simon & Schuster, the publisher of the first installment in the projected multivolume autobiography, said Thursday that the company had no comment on the report.

Crain’s credited the information to “several industry insiders” and said the deal was put together by Dylan’s literary agent, Andrew Wylie. No monetary figure was specified in the report, nor any proposed release dates of new books from Dylan.

“Chronicles” drew praise from critics, fans and peers for its impressionistic, time-hopping structure.

 


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