+ On March 27, 2005, ABC debuted a medical drama titled Grey’s Anatomy from an unknown creator, Shonda Rhimes. The show was an instant smash, and everybody involved was ecstatic. Everybody, that is, except for the series’ star, Ellen Pompeo, the Grey of Grey’s Anatomy. “I knew I was fucked,” she recalls thinking at the time. After all, Pompeo was supposed to be a movie star.
Following a rocky childhood in a blue-collar, mob-heavy Boston suburb, where she and several siblings were raised by her father and grandparents (her mother died of an overdose when Pompeo was just 5), she headed to Hollywood. Before long, her breakout role as the love interest in the 2002 film Moonlight Mile sparked interest from major filmmakers. “Sam Mendes, Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty,” she…