- published: 25 Apr 2016
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Ellen Pompeo was born on November 10, 1969. She is an actress, known for playing the role of Meredith Grey on the ABC show Grey's Anatomy.
Ellen Kathleen Pompeo was born in Everett, Massachusetts, the daughter of Joseph, a salesman, and Kathleen Pompeo. Of Irish and Italian descent, she was raised Roman Catholic. Pompeo's grandfather was born in Gesualdo, a village in the Province of Avellino, Italy.[citation needed] Her mother died of a painkiller overdose when Ellen was four, and her father remarried soon after. She has five siblings: three sisters and two brothers. She was nicknamed the pencil, and Stracciatella (an Italian egg drop soup).
For more than two years, she served cocktails in Miami, where she met fashion photographer Andrew Rosenthal, with whom she was romantically linked for some time.[citation needed] In 1996, she was bartending at the SoHo Bar & Grill in New York City's Upper West Side when an agent approached her to appear in commercials.[citation needed] Subsequently, she appeared in commercials for Citibank and L'Oréal.[citation needed] She began her career with minor roles on television shows like Strangers with Candy, Friends and Law & Order and a handful of others.