Hot Splice: Faces to watch
From SPLICE magazine (January 1988)
“I’m not going to be a Dustin Hoffman or a Warren Beatty,” 21-year-old Patrick Dempsey tells Splice. “We already have those. I’m going to be a Patrick Dempsey. Who’s that? Well, that’s what I’m trying to work on.”
So far, Patrick’s work has paid off. Last summer, he won the hearts of moviegoers as the terminally untrendy high school senior Ronald Miller — who pays for the attention of cheerleader Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson) — in Can’t Buy me Love [as seen in top photo].
And as Ellsworth “Sonny” Wisecarver, the 14-year-old California boy who made headlines in 1944 by marrying a woman six years his senior in In The Mood, Patrick proved he could strut his stuff in front of the camera.
“I started juggling and riding a unicycle when I was 16,” he says. “Later, I got my first play with the Main Acting Company. One night, on my birthday, I just decided that this is what I want to do.”
ALSO SEE: Young Sean Astin at age 16: Acting was all in the family (1988)
