TV breeds the new male star

Casting director Jane Jenkins remembers Patrick Dempsey in his pre-McDreamy doldrums. So did a lot of other people in Hollywood. For no apparent reason, she said, “We had to fight with everyone to hire this guy.” In 1989, he had been the romantic lead in “Loverboy”; by 2000, he was the cop in “Scream 3.”

Then, of course, “Grey’s Anatomy” popped like a Champagne cork.

“It took a hit television series for him to suddenly become everybody’s leading man,” said Jenkins, co-founder of the Casting Co., a firm that has helped film and television directors narrow down their casting choices for 27 years. Known as sexy neurosurgeon Derek Shepherd on ABC’s four-season medical-show phenomenon, Dempsey is now starring in Disney’s big-screen hit “Enchanted.” Next year, he’ll play the romantic lead in Columbia’s comedy “Made of Honor.”

As the class divide between TV and film keeps shrinking, TV has been solidifying its role as a maker of leading men. Original shows, on cable as well as network TV, are shifting attention to more mature and complex characters. The small screen is now crowded with charming, smart, confident, humorous grown-up men who are riveting critics’ attention.

Kyle Chandler’s manly, moral husband/father/coach centers NBC’s “Friday Night Lights.” Jon Hamm’s mysterious, unfaithful husband/father/ad executive takes charge of AMC’s “Mad Men,” and Jeffrey Donovan, the intelligent, haunted and irreverent bachelor/ex-CIA agent adds depth to USA’s “Burn Notice.”

Jenkins said it doesn’t matter if Donovan’s isn’t a household name yet. She’s confident it soon will be.

“People in the business have all taken notice at this point, and the world will follow,” she said.

Donovan, who described his pre-”Burn Notice” career as having “risen below the radar,” just landed a part opposite Angelina Jolie in director Clint Eastwood’s film “The Changeling.”

Likewise, Hamm, who seemed to come from nowhere last summer, has since been pictured as his glamorous 1960 character Don Draper in leading magazines and newspapers. Though Hamm said he’s not exactly getting Hollywood’s “Vinnie Chase” treatment, he still sits in meetings he wouldn’t have had six months ago. And he’s now starring in an independent film, “The Boy in the Box.”

For his part, a grateful Dempsey credits the nature of his “perfect man” character, the writing and the visibility television offers. “Studios are willing to bankroll you because of that exposure,” he said.

A certain comfort level

These TV-bred leading men are clearly men, not guys. But befitting the medium that created them, their masculinity seems to be a rather domesticated one, signifying perhaps a cultural shift in what audiences -- both men and women -- want from men. Where film’s leading men from the eras that spawned, say, Cary Grant and Paul Newman had a special-occasion remoteness, a sense of formality, TV’s leading men have issues: families, children, wives and ex-wives, problems at work. Television offers a familiarity, an intimacy, that brings actors not only into everyone’s homes but also into their everyday lives for weeks on end. It’s no wonder that in the end, they come off as everyday men, not larger-than-life superheroes -- even in the case of Hamm, whose character actually does come from the Cary Grant era.

The actors who embody this new masculinity have gained career options along with their aura of self-effacing approachability.

Chandler, 42, (“King Kong,” “Grey’s Anatomy”) said he enjoys the growth he’s found in roles he’s played on stage, screen and TV. “TV’s been good to me,” he said. “If I can keep doing all three, in the end, I’ll call that successful.”

With the substantial improvement in television quality, it may in fact be difficult for the actors to find movie roles that are as interesting as the ones they’ve had on TV, said film historian David Thomson. Because more people are watching television, “to be in a hit television series now is almost a more impressive kind of stardom than movie stardom,” he said.

In the past, the fortunate few who crossed over from television into Hollywood’s pantheon of leading men never looked back. Clint Eastwood (“Rawhide”) led the way, to be followed by Warren Beatty and Robert Redford (“Playhouse 90,” among others), Bruce Willis (“Moonlighting”), Johnny Depp (“21 Jump Street”) and George Clooney (“ER”) -- arguably the only leading man of the day who could rival Grant or Clark Gable for a knowing, twinkly eyed smirk. The envy of many actors today, Clooney famously parlayed his appeal into a producing and directing career as well.

“The Sopranos” raised the bar for high-class television and made careers for its stars, Thomson said. “James Gandolfini was made by ‘The Sopranos.’ He will never do anything like it,” Thomson said.

Television has also likely linked the name Kiefer Sutherland with “Jack Bauer” for the foreseeable future. Sutherland had played supporting roles in films, but after “24” he became an international star. A film version, said to be in the works, would bring him back to theaters as a star for his television role.

Alec Baldwin rose from TV (“Knots Landing”) to film but returned for a career boost with “30 Rock.”

Dempsey, for one, said he wants to continue making feature films. He said his future depends on the outcome of the writers strike and that he intends to honor his contractual obligations to the network. But he said, “I enjoy the process of making a movie. . . . I like the fact that there’s a beginning, a middle and an end.”

The current crop of leading men has kicked around Hollywood long enough without jackpot rewards to view the specter of big-screen success with some ambivalence.

“I was never into the big, super movie-star guys,” Hamm said. “I appreciated what they did. But I was more drawn to Jeff Bridges and the guys who were two or three down on the call sheet but got to do really cool movies. I loved ‘The Big Lebowski.’ ”

Still, at 36, he said, “It’s nice to be invited to the big kids’ table.”

Donovan, 39, a theater actor who’s also done film (“Hitch,” “Believe in Me”), said he likes the freedom that comes with making enough money to pay the rent and make his own career choices but still being able to go shopping without being swamped by paparazzi. When he landed the role in Eastwood’s film, he said, he smiled from ear to ear for a day. “Then terror set in. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to act with Ms. Jolie, Mr. Malkovich and Mr. Eastwood.’ ”

Donovan knows his everyday looks won’t land him on People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive List. (Dempsey was runner-up after Matt Damon this year.) While agents see him as a leading man, he sees himself more as a character actor, along the lines of Jimmy Stewart.

Of course, as casting directors point out, what makes an actor a leading man is often simply a matter of taste. Keli Lee, ABC’s executive vice president of casting, said Dempsey had made three pilots for ABC and was on creator Shonda Rhimes’ radar from the start. “Shonda envisioned that that character should be her perfect man,” and Dempsey fit the bill.

Building Mr. Perfect

But there’s consensus about some aspects of the leading-man type: By definition, he is someone women want to date and men want to hang out with, Jenkins said. It’s an intangible and variable mix of qualities that, depending on whom you talk to, include: smart, sexy, funny, charming, charismatic, interesting, tough, irreverent, confident, comfortable, cuddly, strong, likable, trustworthy, suave, debonair, secure, manly, deep and mature.

“What makes an actor appealing is that they’re somebody you’d like to spend time with, no matter who you are,” Jenkins said. And, once solidified in the right kind of role, the appeal tends to be universal over time and continents, she said. Clooney, Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks are all popular abroad.

Historically, audiences have wanted to believe that a leading man is also being more or less himself in the various parts he plays. Thomson said Gary Cooper once offered this advice to a screenwriter struggling to devise a script in which Cooper would star: “I’ve found if you just make me the hero, it usually works out.”

When a star pops as a leading man, it’s often because the role matches his own personality.

“Burn Notice” creator Matt Nix said some of Donovan’s earlier roles didn’t click because they were one- dimensional and didn’t showcase Donovan’s innate mix of humor and intensity. “He’s too good to be bad and too bad to be good,” Nix said.

Fortunately for older actors, the zeitgeist has shifted slightly to accommodate an appreciation of adults, offering actors a chance to bring their own experience to more complex and flawed characters.

Hamm said when he first came to California, it was during the “ ‘Dawson’s Creek’ era,” when most parts were for teens. “I was 25 but looked much older. I couldn’t get arrested,” he said. “Eventually, I caught up with my own age,” he said.

Chandler said at this point, he feels like a leading man. “Usually leading men have a certain sense of themselves. They know who they are.” Now a husband and father of two, he said, “I have a good idea of who I am.”

His performance as Coach Taylor comes from a part of himself he’s never been able to use before, he said. “I’ve never had a role quite like this -- a father, a husband, a leader of these kids.” Many of the moral decisions the coach faces are similar to those he’s starting to experience in his real life, he said. “I get to stretch my real world within this other world.”

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lynn.smith@latimes.com