Ellen Pompeo
Ellen Pompeo is a late bloomer by Hollywood standards. Joking that she grew up in a town where people would think you were crazy if you said you were going to be an actor when you grew up, she didn't get her first paying gigs until the late nineties when she was almost 30, practically geriatric by women in Hollywood standards. She'd quit bartending in Miami, moved to New York with her fashion photographer beau Andrew Rosenthal and booked a L'Oreal commercial. The ad was followed by numerous TV guest spots on shows like Law & Order and a plethora of mediocre indie films, but it was standout turns as love interests to Jake Gyllenhaal and Leonardo DiCaprio in Moonlight Mile and Catch Me If You Can respectively that made her more than just a "I swear I've seen her before" face and lead to being cast in Old School, Daredevil and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (although all of her scenes were cut from the latter). She scrubbed into the title role on Grey's Anatomy in 2005, an ABC mid-season replacement about the surgical and sex lives of a group of interns that became an overnight success and eventually beat CSI for the No. 1 drama spot. Being one half of one of TV's most-debated couplings earned her a SAG award win and a Golden Globe nod at 37. Off screen, Pompeo has her own McDreamy, music producer Chris Ivery, with whom she tied the knot in 2007 and welcomed a daughter, Stella, in 2009.
