Esquire magazine - October 2002 UK issue

Source: allstars

F! magazine - October 2007 issue

So long the underdog, Ellen Pompeo has finally hit the big time as the star of the award-winning drama ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. The product of a desperately tough childhood - and now the ‘12th most powerful’ celebrity in the world - she tells Sean Carter how it all came good

LA Confidential Magazine - Emmy/Fall 2007 issue

Just what the doctor ordered: a candid conversation with Ellen Pompeo, who’s every bit as outspoken as she is stylish.

If Ellen Pompeo had to write an essay along the lines of “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” it would probably be about the globe-trotting she’s done—New York, Paris, Japan—in the weeks leading up to the filming of the fourth season of her hit ABC show, Grey’s Anatomy.

It’s been a wild ride for the 37-year-old Boston native, who got engaged in November to fellow Bostonian Chris Ivery. Pompeo first made a blip on the entertainment radar in 2002 as Jake Gyllenhaal’s love interest in Moonlight Mile, alongside Hollywood heavyweights Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon. She popped up again here and there in mostly forgettable roles (usually cast as the stereotypical wife or girlfriend) in memorable movies like Old School and Catch Me If You Can. But in 2005, Grey’s Anatomy suddenly thrust her fully into the spotlight and onto small screens across America. Pompeo shines as the romantically challenged Meredith Grey, whose sexual exploits and professional struggles are chronicled in excruciating detail each week, much to the delight of the show’s 25 million-plus loyal viewers who keep tuning in to ogle Grey’s McLoveInterest du jour.

Unlike her character, however, Pompeo is anything but indecisive. Full of opinions on everything from young Hollywood to the media’s choice of topics, Pompeo calls it like she sees it, refreshing in a town where honesty is rarely the best policy. “I just think the media should take this country in a different direction. We’re so focused on the wrong things,” she says. “We’re teaching young girls that this is what they should be focusing on: rich and famous girls who are rich and famous for nothing. What are we doing to this younger generation? It’s not very responsible.”

Los Angeles Confidential: You’ve been traveling a lot during your hiatus. Is that how you typically spend your time off?
Ellen Pompeo: I think it’s important as an actor to get away and experience different cultures. It enriches you. I’m fortunate that the show’s in so many different countries and that they’re nice enough to invite us [to visit]. They treat us so wonderfully. You know, I spend 10 months of the year in Los Angeles, acting. So I think it’s really important to travel and have rich real-life experiences to bring to my acting when I come back to the show. Your whole life can’t be about work or Hollywood.

LAC: And planning your wedding? When will you fit that in?
EP: Oh my goodness. I swear we’re going to get married at some time. We’re just trying to fit it all in. It won’t be a big ceremony—we want one thing to ourselves.

LAC: A lot of TV actors make movies while they’re on hiatus. You started out in film; do you still have an interest in that?
EP: Certainly, and I get a lot of very interesting offers from some pretty remarkable people, but I can’t take advantage of them because the show doesn’t let me. I’m lucky the show is so successful: I never have to do another movie I’m not proud of. I can be super, super picky. So unless it’s an A-list director and an A-list script, and an A-list cast, I don’t really have the desire to be in movies just to prove that I can. I know I can, because I came from movies.

LAC: You’re contracted for six seasons, right?
EP: Yes, although I just signed on for a seventh. The show could end tomorrow, but if they want me for seven seasons, I have to oblige. I’ve committed to them. They can let us go anytime they want, but we can’t leave anytime we want.

LAC: On that topic, during the Isaiah Washington controversy you seemed to steer clear of making any substantive comment on his being fired from the show. Is that because you feel there’s not much for you to say?
EP: I think so. It’s better to not exacerbate it. I think everybody’s tired of it. For me, what’s important is to move forward, do whatever I can personally to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again.

LAC: Another thing that’s been done to death in your past interviews is this obsession with your weight. Why do you think people care so much?
EP: I guess it’s a normal question from the media because I’m really thin. The dangerous thing about it is that I get a ton of fan mail from little girls—from seven years old to 16—about how they love me and I’m a role model for them. And I think the media is really irresponsible in portraying me as having an eating disorder. I just worry about the girls who look up to me—I don’t want them to think I starve myself or don’t eat, and that to be like me that’s what they have to do.

LAC: Why is it so hard for people to wrap their heads around the fact that some women are naturally thin?
EP: You know what’s funny? I understand if you see a picture of someone who was 40 pounds heavier three years before; then the weight loss is very dramatic and obvious. But you’ll never find a picture of me where I’m a lot heavier than I am now. I’ve only ever fluctuated two to three pounds in my whole [adult] life.

LAC: Do you have any interest in having children of your own someday?
EP: I do. I do. With the show, I just don’t know if it’s entirely fair to myself and to everybody else right now. We’ll see what happens.

LAC: So after your travels you immediately start work on season four. What would you like to see happen to Meredith this year? Last season was kind of bananas…
EP: [Laughs] Yeah, it was! I’m much better off not having any expectations. The reality is that I have to be very Zen about it because I have absolutely no control over what they do. I’m just happy to have a job and I love my job, and I love the people I work with. Whatever happens, it’s OK. It’s not a bad way to make a living.

LAC: When did you realize Grey’s was a hit? Was it clear to you from the minute you got the script?
EP: It was two years in, when I got invited to do the Oprah Winfrey Show. I thought, OK, well, this has clearly gone to another level now.

LAC: You’ve been nominated for a Golden Globe before. What’s your take on awards shows?
EP: Of course it’s nice to be nominated. I don’t live or die by it, but it’s very flattering. To be nominated would be a nice compliment. There are fantastic actresses in this category every year. But at end of the day, we’re not saving lives. We’re just actors.

LAC: Speaking of saving lives, now that you’ve been doing the show for a while, do you think you could perform a real-life medical procedure if you had to?
EP: [Laughs] Absolutely not! But I could call 911 very well.

LAC: Have you given any thought as to who you’ll be wearing to the Emmys?
EP: No, I haven’t, but I know I’ll be wearing something a lot lighter than last year. I’d just gotten back from the Dior couture show in Paris and I wore this beautiful velvet dress that John [Galliano] gave me. And it was gorgeous, but it was so hot.

LAC: Well, it’s always better to be comfortable at these things.
EP: [Laughs] Yeah, it is, but it’s kind of impossible. There’s no such thing as a comfortable gown. H

LA Confidential outtakes

Source: la-confidential, larafan21

Stella - The Telegraph UK interview

UP POMPEO
So long the underdog, Ellen Pompeo has finally hit the big time as the star of the award-winning drama 'Grey's Anatomy'. The product of a desperately tough childhood - and now the '12th most powerful' celebrity in the world - she tells Marianne Macdonald how it all came good

The dark back office of a Georgian house in Bloomsbury is an incongruous place to be interviewing Ellen Pompeo. But that's where we've retreated after her photo-shoot is over. It's a far cry from the sun-baked Los Angeles lot where Pompeo is usually to be found, in scrubs, as the title character in Grey's Anatomy. Dr Meredith Grey - brisk, vulnerable, self-destructive, talented - is a lead unlike any other on American television, and her gripping screen presence and romantic 'car crashes' hook 20 million viewers a week.
In its annual 'Celebrity 100' power list the business magazine Forbes ranked Pompeo and her co-stars at number 12 this year, while the Desperate Housewives cast languished at number 47. Yet here in Britain, where the drama is the main draw on the digital channel Living with reruns on Five, Pompeo is hardly a household name.

Male critics have sniffed at the 'vapid' scripts and 'mawkish' acting in the drama about five trainee surgeons at a Seattle hospital. But Pompeo's portrayal of a woman totally competent in her work and an utter disaster in her relationships has forced even veteran Hollywood producers to examine how a lead who is such a mess - prone to getting drunk in bars and picking up strangers - can prove so compelling.

The tabloids, for their part, have focused on Pompeo's weight (supposedly anorexic), behaviour on set (supposedly a diva) and, since her November engagement, the colourful past of her fiancé Chris Ivery, a record producer, and the size of the ring he has given her. This, a dazzling oblong diamond, has caused Pompeo so much angst that she is even now twisting it off her tiny hand. 'Completely garish, isn't it?' she asks in her little, clear voice. 'He got it in Beverly Hills and spent his entire life savings, which I could kill him for. I was very mad about it. Some days I really love it, and some days I just want to sell it and give the money to charity. All the magazines care about is the size. I think, "Oh, it's absolute rubbish and I'd like to throw the ring in the sewer."' She looks at me wryly. 'I know! How fortunate of me to sit here with this giant rock when there are babies in Africa fighting for their lives.' She has gone from making no money to making great money. How does that feel? 'I feel guilty.' She gives a high, truthful laugh of embarrassment. 'I feel guilty!'

Like so many Hollywood stars Pompeo is small and fragile. Her hand, when I shake it, is like a bunch of twigs and her muscled arms are as tiny as a child's. She is wearing a black sleeveless cotton dress over thin black leggings and Lanvin ballet flats, and in person looks completely different from on screen - younger and more innocent, a cross between Michelle Pfeiffer and Calista Flockhart. Her long hair is healthy and red, her blue eyes have a tinge of green and she keeps almost constant eye contact in a way that is not at all uncomfortable. Here on her an eight-week hiatus from Grey's, she and Ivery are looking for a London flat to buy, before zipping on to Paris and Tokyo.

She had a sad, difficult childhood as the last of six - she was eight years younger than her nearest sibling - in the blue-collar town of Everett, near Boston, and was four when her mother, Kathleen, died of an overdose of painkillers. Her first memory is of her siblings attempting to revive her. The trauma in this vignette is hair-raising, and she admits, putting her hand to her throat, 'I had a tragedy as a child, obviously, my mother dying, and it sort of… I suppose I describe it as… it sort of left me with a broken heart.' But can you mend a broken heart? 'No, never completely.' Her voice lifts, childishly. 'But that's OK, because it makes me appreciate my life.' Had she found therapy useful with that? 'No, I think my job is therapeutic.

It was quite a tragic thing, all these children having no mother; it was quite difficult on my father,' she continues. 'And then he remarried shortly after my mother died, and, ah, much too soon. It was… quite a bad situation for all the children.' Why, what was her stepmother like? 'Oh, I'd rather not discuss that. So I would go off and stay with various people. I was always being shuffled around. Who could baby-sit me this time? So I would go for the summers and the weekends to my aunt Ellen, who I'm named after, and my uncle Jimmy on the Upper East Side of New York. My uncle Jimmy took me to the theatre. And another of my mother's sisters, Sister Maureen, was a nun and lived in a convent in the Bronx, and I would go stay there often, as well.'

Pompeo says, batting away sympathy, that those 'different experiences' gave her a lot to draw on in her acting. But she also concedes that, 'I was just completely confused. I knew I had a lot of people who loved me. There were a lot of different types of people in my life, and I had all these brothers and sisters who were crazy hippy teenagers, smoking pot in the wild 1970s - rock 'n' roll - and I had my dear, dear grandparents…' Everyone, but no one? She pauses. 'I did… well, you know, I had everybody but the one person I really wanted.'

Her father, Joseph, a tobacco salesman, was a strong character. 'He intimidated everybody. He'd wait at the window and when they dropped me off in front of the house he'd fly out of the door and rip them out of the car by the neck,' she has said, alarmingly, of her teenage dates, but he also told her she could do anything she wanted in life. What she wanted was to act. So the moment she turned 19 she made for Miami, where she got a job as a cocktail waitress. Despite her fragile, feminine appearance, she was no pushover. 'I'd abuse the customers, yell and scream at them and make them wait. If they put money down on the bar and it wasn't enough, I'd go wait on someone else. Pretty soon there would be $20 on the bar,' she once told Playboy. I love that image of you at the bar, I tell her. 'Right!' She laughs with real amusement. 'Well, I don't know if you've seen The Departed, but Boston, my home town, is a corrupt place. I grew up in an Italian-Irish neighbourhood, and there were Irish gangsters and Italian gangsters. It's very much like a modern-day Gangs of New York.'

After two years in Miami she went to New York. But her dream of becoming an actress still seemed 'such a grand thing. I felt so overwhelmed, you know, "How do I figure out how to go about this?"' She was also suffering profoundly from her childhood. 'It's as if the floor beneath you is… as if a board is always going to fall through.'

She was 25 when she got her first break; an acting agent approached her as she was working the bar at the SoHo Kitchen. The agent put Pompeo up for three adverts; she got all three. Then Pompeo landed a part opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in the 2002 film Moonlight Mile. He, by chance, had come up to her in a car park three weeks previously and told her she was 'the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my entire life'. For her the coincidence was life-changing. 'It sort of hit me that I was being guided,' she says. 'I had sort of spent my twenties up until then looking for some sign of my mother, you know, "Make the chandelier swing and show me that you're with me." And at that point I put my faith in the idea that life gives you signs and, whether it's my mother's spirit or not, I've had too many coincidences in my life for it to be normal.'

Another was the way she met Ivery. They had grown up two miles apart but met only in 2003 when a mutual friend introduced them at a Whole Foods shop in Los Angeles. 'I knew his background and I knew the circle in which he ran and I didn't want anything to do with it,' she admits. 'You think you want to get away from your past and be this completely different person. And then I run into him again two days later and by this time in my life I know that's no accident. I knew he was supposed to be in my life.' He had gone to jail briefly? 'Oh, yes, a couple of times. But most people I knew in Boston did. It was very common, which is why I had to get out.'

Something of Pompeo's childhood vulnerability comes off the pages of her previous interviews and you hope, before you meet her, that Ivery is good news. He drives her to work and visits the set most days; she says they do everything together. 'To know someone - the real them, not the reinvented Hollywood them, with all of their flaws and all of their past - that's a true relationship,' she says. 'I feel very lucky. It's very solid.'

ask what she makes of her character's romantic travails in Grey's Anatomy. 'She has a complete lack of emotional intelligence,' she exclaims. 'I just want to smack some sense into her.' What would she advise her? 'Don't ever beg a man.' (She is referring to the scene where Meredith pleads with her married lover Derek to choose her.) 'He should be begging you!'

What next for Pompeo? Halfway through a six-year lock-in for Grey's, she and Ivery are now trying for children. Does their forthcoming wedding excite her? 'No, I'm not someone to stand on ceremony. That's why I have such a problem with the ring. It is a symbol. Just rather an extravagant one.' She gives another high laugh of embarrassment.

I say it must feel like it's all coming right. She smiles. 'I think so. A friend who I moved to Miami with when I was 16 or 17, he was photographing me back then and said, "You're going to make a great 40-year-old." I didn't know how to take that at 16 or 17, but I never forgot it. Now I feel like the older I get the more I am able to take on.'

Her publicist is mouthing that we have to finish. 'I love the architecture round here,' Pompeo says, getting up. 'It reminds me of my home town.' I catch sight of her in the next room as I leave. She looks different now, 17 again, a sprite, a slip of a thing, in her teenage black wardrobe. 'I took a sleeping pill last night, which I don't usually do, because my body is too little to take it, and this morning I was all over the place,' she exclaims, seeing me looking at her outfit. 'I could hardly manage to dress!'

Source: telegraph

Official Grey's Anatomy Magazine #3 sneek peek

Welcome to ABC.com's sneek peek of the all-new, official Grey's Anatomy Magazine #3. This special 100-page issue includes a great interview with Ellen Pompeo... (read more)

GREY AREA It's been one year (in story time) since Meredith Grey picked up a scalpel at Seattle Grace Hospital, and although she's learnt a lot about surgery, will she ever learn about love? Despite all her efforts to extricate herself, she's still locked into her on-off relationship with dishy doctor Derek Shepherd, and no matter how much she tries, she can't make herself fall outof love with him. She's tried the distractions of gorgeous vet Finn, and a disastrous one-night stand with fellow intern George O'Malley. She's tried dumping Derek, she's tried choosing Derek. He's even tried walking away from her for her own sake, but fighting battles of life and death in the emotionally-charged atmosphere at Seattle Grace keeps throwing them back together.

Sometimes, actress Ellen Pompeo admits, even she wants to sit her character down and give her a good talking to. "She could stand to learn a few things from me. Emotionally speaking, I'm light years away from Meredith Grey," she says. "She has some catching up to do with her emotional intelligence. I think the problem is she has spent so much time focusing on the academia, that the emotional part of her life has come sort of secondary to the books. But I like the fact that she's flawed. She has all this disappointment and sadness and anger, and we're trying to show that everyone makes mistakes. There's usually a double standard in TV, so if a man is flawed, he's seen as dark, complex, and interesting, while if a woman is flawed, she's needy and whiny. We're trying to show everyone is just human, with weaknesses."

But as far as Ellen's concerned, Meredith's biggest mistake was staying mixed up with a married man. When Derek revealed there was still a Mrs McDreamy in the picture, it should have been her cue to run for the hills. But instead, Meredith and Derek continued to dance around each other, despite Addison being a constant fly in the ointment. "I'd like to teach Meredith to walk away sooner," says Ellen. "The minute that wife came into the picture, she should have just been gone, and you know, no begging and just to hell with him. And of course if you run, they'll chase."

Read the full interview in Issue #3 of the official Grey's Anatomy Magazine, on sale June 12. Also coming up in Issue #3:Source: Grey's Anatomy

Source

Italian magazine

"Grey's Anatomy" Press Conference - July 6, 2006

On the cover of Entertainment Weekly - December 29, 2006

Grey's Anatomy cast in Entertainment Weekly magazine
December 29, 2006 - January 5, 2007 issue

(read more)


Grey cast on EW's Entertainers of the Year list The sexy stars of ''Grey's Anatomy'' top our list of 2006's brightest stars

rest of the scans here by mediocrechick (lj)

'Grey's' Zone

Read why the characters at Seattle Grace are our Entertainers of the Year by Jennifer Armstrong

Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo are snuggled in a rumpled bed, and he is looking at her. And by looking at her, we mean looking at her. It is the look that has sent several fictional lives on Grey's Anatomy into dramatic tailspins and has given millions of fans endless fantasy material.

And yet, Pompeo is...giggling. Hysterically.

She apologizes, but she cannot stop. A patient Dempsey morphs from smoldering leading man to bemused costar to, finally, stern taskmaster: ''Quiet, close your eyes, and breathe deeply.'' She does, and for a take or two, it works — Dempsey, as Dr. Derek Shepherd, can peacefully (well, except for the snoring) observe his lover, Dr. Meredith Grey, as she slumbers. Then her laughter breaks loose again, and Pompeo storms off the bedroom set, shouting, ''I can't work with him anymore!''

She is careful, later, to explain that this was just a joke (people are a bit sensitive around the set of the ABC hit these days; more on that later). But emotions do run high — and fast — when it comes to Grey's Anatomy. Its myriad moods change from sexy to funny to dramatic to silly, making for an intoxicating thrill ride that is as unpredictable as it is unmissable.

Since their first half-season in 2005, Seattle Grace's improbably hot surgical staffers have gone from midseason replacements to bona fide stars. And now, having relocated to the toughest time slot on TV, Grey's has become nothing short of a phenomenon, luring an average of 21.4 million fans every week and consistently topping Thursday-night behemoth CSI in the 18-49 demographic. How did they do it? ''The characters are so human,'' ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson says. ''Life is messy, it's funny, it's tragic, it's dramatic, and this show captures that.''

For maintaining that deft dramatic balance, for performing a powerful emotional alchemy that transforms the hospital-show genre into something exciting rather than exhausted, and for casting perhaps the most telegenic assemblage of actors in the last decade — for all of these reasons, we have chosen the cast of Grey's Anatomy as our Entertainers of the Year.

That attitude allows the show to take risks: consummating the crush that sweet intern George O'Malley (T.R. Knight, 33) harbored on mixed-up Meredith. That fleeting Meredith-George liaison ''was shocking — even for me, personally,'' says Pompeo, 37. (Knight, along with Walsh and Heigl, declined to participate in this story.) ''I've been kissing Patrick since I met him, but I was like, No, that's my T! I can't make out with him!'' Adds Sandra Oh, 35, who plays tightly wound Dr. Yang, ''When we saw that for the first time at a table read, we were like, Nooooo!'' That's precisely the reaction creator/exec producer Shonda Rhimes, 36, was hoping for. ''When people say they hate what's happening, and then go on to describe in detail everything they hate, I know they're really paying attention and have strong feelings about the characters,'' she says. ''That's a good sign.''

True enough: Few other shows can inspire so much fan ardor with such flawed characters. Pompeo certainly spends a good part of her press time defending her boy-crazy, whiny alter ego. ''If Meredith Grey were a man,'' she insists, ''everyone would say, Oh, how interesting he is!'' But recent addition Eric Dane — a.k.a. Mark ''McSteamy'' Sloan — would like to see Pompeo's broke-up-a-marriage story line and raise her a no-discernible-redeeming-qualities character.
(Posted:12/20/06)

To read the full article, click this

Source: EW

EW Magazine 'Entertainers of the Year' Photoshoot Outtakes

Ellen in O, the Oprah magazine - January 2006 issue

JANUARY 2007—HEALTH

Books That Made a Difference to Ellen Pompeo I read a lot of nonfiction—especially books about the brain. I'm interested in Howard Gardner's theories of multiple intelligence. He believes that the standard IQ test measures only one kind of aptitude but that it doesn't account for other, equally important talents. His work makes sense to me: I have very little book smarts, I'm terrible at math, and I have next to no memory retention, but I'm strong in the emotional intelligence area.

Learning about the way people process information and their emotions is hugely helpful to my work. Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens, for instance, is very thought-provoking for an actor. He writes about the levels of consciousness and how the brain works, exploring where a particular feeling comes from, how it might be generated, and what memories are playing into how you feel about certain images.

I'm drawn to this type of stuff—for both my acting and my life.

What's on Ellen Pompeo's Bookshelf? Read more!


scans by sharipep (TI)

Source: Oprah

Ellen Pompeo in Playboy Magazine

Ellen Pompeo sounds very tired of questions about her weight.

In the January issue of Playboy, the star of "Grey's Anatomy" says she's "paying a trainer $1,000 a week to torture me with weights so I can get bigger."

She adds, facetiously one presumes, "Oh, excuse me, I have to go throw up now.”

"If I could gain five to 10 pounds, it would probably go straight to my boobs and [butt]," she told the magazine. "I would be the happiest girl in Hollywood, trust me. I’d have this sick bod because I’d be the skinny girl with big [breasts] and a cut butt."

If she could gain 10 pounds? Ellen, come over to my house. I'll show you how -- it's easy! I can do it without even trying.

Pompeo answered other questions in the magazine's January "20Q" (20 questions) feature, some saucy, some semi-serious. Angelina Jolie is the female celeb she'd most like to "make out with," she said.

"She’s gorgeous," Pompeo said. "Or Sandra Oh. [laughs] I’d be too afraid of Isaiah Washington’s Dr. Burke, though. I don’t want to be on his bad side.”

Here are a few other excepts from the interview with Pompeo, which hits the stands Friday:

On being a bartender: “I wouldn’t say I was a good drink maker, but I was a very good hustler. I’d abuse the customers, yell and scream at them and make them wait. If they put money down on the bar and it wasn’t enough, I’d go wait on someone else who was giving me enough money. If they put another five down and I made them wait longer, pretty soon there would be $20 on the bar. Then I’d come over and give them a drink.”

On using real brains on the set of "Grey’s Anatomy": “It’s gross. We use real brains — I think they’re lamb or cow or something. Intestines smell. Brains don’t really smell, but what’s amazing about the brain is that it’s almost like scrambled eggs or soft tofu, almost like a gel. The brain controls so much of what we do, but you could put your finger right through it.”

On why she did "Grey’s Anatomy": “I’m seriously considering working during our next hiatus, but I don’t need to work for the money. If there’s something with an unbelievable cast and director, I’m going to jump at it. But I did this TV show so I wouldn’t have to do [bad] parts in [bad] movies, so I’m not going to start now. I’m not that desperate.”

UPDATE: Here are a few additional excerpts from Pompeo's Playboy interview.

PLAYBOY: Lots of us know you for roles in "Catch Me If You Can" and "Old School," but playing a surgical intern on "Grey’s Anatomy" has brought your biggest fame. When did you first notice guys wanting to play doctor with you?

POMPEO: I didn’t have any confidence as a young girl, because all the other girls had [breasts] and hips. I was always thin, always called the stick or the pencil. I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was 16, and he was eight years older. My father was furious about this 24-year-old, and I had to hide the relationship.

PLAYBOY: You must also have learned the art of survival very young, since your mother died when you were four.

POMPEO: I don’t want to talk about that. But because of what happened to me as a child, we had different babysitters -every day; all these characters in my life would babysit me. I have so many different influences. My mother came from an Irish family of 11 kids and, of course, had a sister who was a nun, so I spent time at a convent and with an aunt and uncle who lived in New York and took me to the theater. It was the 1970s, and all my brothers and sisters were hippies. They were smoking pot and watching "The Three Stooges." When I was small it seemed chaotic, but now, as an older woman looking back, I think, My God, it’s so much to draw on.

PLAYBOY: Does the [media] scrutiny ever get under your skin?

POMPEO: The trap is when you start to pay attention to that stuff and care, because in six months they’re going to be looking at someone else. You know how fickle everyone is. They love it, then they hate it, then they love it. So I’m going to enjoy it because it could be over at any minute.

PLAYBOY: You have the distinction of being one of the most famous victims on "Punk’d." A sexy waitress at an L.A. restaurant came on to your boyfriend so strongly that you jokingly threatened to gouge her with a fork. Then you found out your boyfriend tipped her $200 on your credit card. When did you catch on?

POMPEO: It smelled funny from the beginning. My boyfriend, Christopher, is definitely a lady-killer, but 10 minutes in, the waitress was calling him baby and honey. She also had makeup like a Vegas showgirl’s. I caught on halfway through, but they edited that out. I said to Chris, “Are you punking me right now?” and he said, “Ellen, you’re not that famous. Sorry, darling.” If Chris hadn’t been so good, I would definitely have known, but he played it right to the last minute. What’s so funny is that people have said terrible things about me because of that show. I don’t read a lot of Internet stuff, because it’s not healthy, but from what I hear, a lot of women have called me names, saying, “Oh, she was such a [mean person].” Like what they’re saying about me is any better than what I did to that waitress? And they don’t watch "Grey’s Anatomy" because I was such a terrible [mean person] to that waitress? That’s so hypocritical.

Source: Chicago Tribune


MQ (16x)

On the cover of Allure - December 2006 issue

Source: meowbee(TI)