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Sundance has long been a place for unknown actors and filmmakers to make a name for themselves.

So it's easy to forget that it's also a place where well-known stars try to break out of the mold in which they've been cast.

This year, actor Patrick Dempsey is hoping to shed his "Grey's Anatomy" McDreamy role and dodge romantic-comedy pigeonholing after such movies as "Made of Honor," "Enchanted" and "Valentine's Day."

Dempsey has produced and stars in a dark comedy called "Flypaper.: "I'm trying to get away from how people perceive me," he says. "I'm trying to break that typecasting."

The film, a whodunit that involves a bank robbery, has its share of violence and explosions, along with humor. It also stars Ashley Judd, Tim Blake Nelson, Mekhi Phifer and Jeffrey Tambor. "It's a very eclectic group," Dempsey says.

During the $7 million shoot in Baton Rouge, improvisation played a large part.

Dempsey plays Tripp Kennedy, a guy who goes into a bank near closing time just as two different gangs converge to rob it. During a shoot-out, Tripp tackles the teller Kaitlin (Judd) to protect her. The bank's security system end-of-day lockdown kicks in, and everyone is sealed inside the building, leading to a comical cat-and-mouse game.

Even the film's director, Rob Minkoff, was taking a sharp turn after making movies such as Stuart Little and The Lion King.

Other actors have used Sundance to pull off reinventions:

— Actor Steve Carrell showed he could do sad as well as funny when he played the depressed Proust scholar in the 2006 film "Little Miss Sunshine."

— Actor Michael Rapaport has a documentary in this year's festival, "Beats, Rhymes and Life," about the musical collective A Tribe Called Quest.

— Actress Vera Farmiga ("Up in the Air") has a first-time directing project at this year's festival, "Higher Ground." She also stars as a wife and mother who begins to question things after a life spent in a fundamentalist cult.

In "Flypaper," Dempsey's character is a man with obsessions. "My character has mental-health issues," he says. "I went to a psychiatrist to get a handle on the behaviors. (Tripp) has ADD and Asperger's. He has a quirky relationship with money. That's why he goes into the bank, then gets caught up in a bank robbery. This happens right at the same time that he's run out of the meds that keep him sedated."

Dempsey enjoyed talking to an expert to get a handle on his character. "The character was a little bit of a pivot for me, as far as what I've done up to this point," he says. "It was different and challenging. A lot of my behavior comes out of my conversations with the therapist. It was nice to sit down and talk with a professional about the disease and the behaviors."

His character and Judd's strike off sparks while trapped in the bank with the thieving gangs. "Through the course of time they're stuck in the bank together, they develop a fondness for each other," Dempsey says.

Judd ran into Dempsey at the racetrack with her race-car-driver husband, Dario Franchitti. (Dempsey has another professional life as a race-car driver.)

Dempsey sent her the script, and she read it on her BlackBerry en route to the Indy 500 banquet.

For Dempsey, the almost-month-long shoot was a long time away from his wife and three young children. "It had been a while since I'd been on location," he says. "(The cast and crew) all stayed in the same hotel in Baton Rouge, and there was one trailer where we all could watch the World Cup and get to know each other."

His first effort at producing was eye-opening, Dempsey says.

"I learned a lot of things. The technical side of things I was really learning as I was going along," he says. "We had a couple of people I actually had to fire, which was hard to do."

Easier for him was "feeling compassionate for the actors, making sure they're comfortable and supported."

Dempsey hopes audiences will take to the film, which played twice, with both screenings sold out.

Dempsey was in Park City for only a few hours. He flew in from the Daytona International Speedway, where he's readying for a race, then will head back to Florida after the premiere.