ELLEN POMPE How She Founda Her Groove

THE GREY'S ANATOMY STAR WHO FOUGHT TO BECOME ONE OF TV'S HIGHESTPAID ACTRESSES REFLECTS ON KEEPING IT REAL AS A WIFE AND MOM OF THREE AND LOOKS AHEAD WITH A DARING NEW ROLE

- JULIE JORDAN

Ellen Pompeo’s 15-year-old daughter Stella Luna is watching her mom expertly navigate an on- camera interview at a photo shoot. The two frequently make eye contact as Pompeo, 55, answers questions with humor and a no-nonsense sensibility. Asked to describe herself as a mother, the actress laughs. “Oh my goodness, my kid is sitting right there staring at me,” she says. “It depends on what day you get me! But I can tell you it’s my favorite thing that I am, and it’s really all that matters to me.”

After 20 years on television’s longest- running prime-time medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy, Pompeo—who’s also mom to daughter Sienna May, 10, and son Eli Christopher, 8, with her husband, sportswear executive Chris Ivery, 57—has learned who she is and what she wants. Having joined the show in 2005, she fought for a radical $20 million contract in 2017 that made her the highest-paid dramatic actress on television. And while she hasn’t scrubbed out of Grey’s for good (she’s still appearing in a handful of episodes each season), she’s focused on her future. Now she’s taking a dramatic leap by starring in Hulu’s new limited series Good American Family (premiering March 19), which tackles the twisted true-crime story of Natalia Grace. Told from multiple points of view, the show revolves around a Midwestern couple who adopt a Ukrainian child with a rare form of dwarfism. In time they become suspicious that she’s actually an adult and their lives are in danger. “It was like, ‘Wow, this is intense. How would we pull this off?’ And I said, like I say often, ‘This isn’t for me,’” recalls Pompeo, who plays adoptive mother Kristine Barnett. “And then everyone around me convinces me that this is something you definitely should do.”