Casting director Jane Jenkins remembered Patrick Dempsey in his pre-McDreamy doldrums. So did a lot of other people in Hollywood. For no apparent reason, Jenkins 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., which has helped film and television directors narrow 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.

Kyle Chandler's manly, moral husband/father/coach centers NBC's "Friday Night Lights," which airs on Fridays; and Jon Hamm's mysterious, unfaithful husband/father/ad executive takes charge of AMC's "Mad Men" (on hiatus, but renewed for next year, if the writers strike is settled in time); 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.

Donovan 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 been pictured as his glamorous 1960 character Don Draper in leading magazines and newspapers. He now 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, 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.

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 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 might 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. 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").

"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.

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."

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.

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.

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