Get out of her way! Ellen Pompeo is a force to be reckoned with in her starring turn as Meredith Grey on the long-running ABC drama Grey’s Anatomy.
Whether the actress, 50, was calling out her TV husband, Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), on his many fouls through the years or dancing it out with Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), she made her mark as a leading lady on more than one occasion and manages to continue doing so.
Pompeo seems more than comfortable in her role too. “I keep saying, ‘I’m ready to move on and I want to stop the show before the ratings go down,’ but the ratings never go down!” she told TVLine in January. “They go down a little bit, but the fact that we are able to hold our [title as ABC’s No. 1 series] is kind of [incredible]. It’s very cool to have these kind of ratings and be on a hit network show in this [Peak TV] landscape.”
She added: “It’s [a] pretty nice place to work. I like my situation here.”
Pompeo pointed out another reason why she loves her gig during an October 2018 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “I gotta keep doing it, man, because we’re touching lives and making a difference,” she said at the time.
Grey’s Anatomy premiered on ABC in March 2005. The Shonda Rhimes series starred Pompeo, Oh, Dempsey, Katherine Heigl (Izzie Stevens), Justin Chambers (Alex Karev), T. R. Knight (George O’Malley), Chandra Wilson (Miranda Bailey), James Pickens Jr. (Richard Webber) and Isaiah Washington (Preston Burke) upon its debut. Oh, Dempsey, Heigl, Knight and Washington have since departed the show.
Jesse Williams (Jackson Avery), Camilla Luddington (Jo Wilson), Kevin McKidd (Owen Hunt), Caterina Scorsone (Amelia Shepherd), Giacomo Gianniotti (Andrew DeLuca), Kelly McCreary (Maggie Pierce), Kim Raver (Teddy Altman), Chris Carmack (Atticus “Link” Lincoln), Jake Borelli (Levi Schmitt) and Greg Germann (Thomas Koracick) have joined the cast in the following years.
Watch the video above to relive Pompeo’s best moments as the incomparable Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy!
Grey’s Anatomy airs on ABC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET.
