Early Life
Dempsey was born in Lewiston, Maine, and grew up in Buckfield, Maine. His mother, Amanda M. (née Caisson), was a school secretary, and his father, William A. Dempsey, was an insurance salesman. He attended Buckfield High School and St. Dominic Regional High School. He was an adept juggler, tying for second in a national juggling competition. He was also an accomplished skier and while in high school won the Maine state slalom championship.
As a child, Dempsey attended Camp Wekeela located in Hartford, Maine.
Dempsey was diagnosed with dyslexia at age twelve. He told Barbara Walters on her 2008 Oscar special that he thinks dyslexia "made him what he is today." “It’s given me a perspective of — you have to keep working,” Dempsey told Walters. “I have never given up.”
Read more about this topic: Patrick Dempsey
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“For the writer, there is nothing quite like having someone say that he or she understands, that you have reached them and affected them with what you have written. It is the feeling early humans must have experienced when the firelight first overcame the darkness of the cave. It is the communal cooking pot, the Street, all over again. It is our need to know we are not alone.”
—Virginia Hamilton (b. 1936)
“Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)