Ellen Pompeo Recalls ‘Brutal’ Commentary About Her Weight: ‘I Just Had So Much Anxiety’

Ellen Pompeo remembers her days as a young actress and the undue attention that was put on her appearance — something she hopes has changed for those who have come after her.

Pompeo, 55, described the anxiety that the criticism caused in a People interview published Wednesday, February 26.

“I was so skinny and I hated it and everyone thought I had an eating disorder,” she said. “It was a whole situation with how skinny I was, and there was so much negative attention. Girls today can be gorgeous and thin and thank God we’re not allowed to comment on women’s bodies, even though people do. But I just had so much anxiety and lacked self-esteem because people were so critical of my physicality.”

Pompeo first rose to fame with her role in the 2003 comedy Old School. Two years later, she premiered as Dr. Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy and has appeared in more than 400 episodes over 21 seasons.

With two decades in the limelight as the star of ABC’s hit medical drama, Pompeo has rebuilt her confidence. Now, she hopes other young actresses have an easier path.

“The tabloids would say horrible things,” she recalled. “I just remember being so anxious on red carpets, and the comments about my weight and my body,” she adds. “I’m so glad, maybe, hopefully things have changed, because it was much, much more brutal 20 years ago.”

Pompeo added that over the years, she has become “pretty resilient.” While she continues her work on Grey’s Anatomy, she’s also gearing up for the premiere of Hulu limited series Good American Family, premiering in March. The eight-episode series follows Kristine (Pompeo) and Michael Barnett (Mark Duplass), a couple that adopts a young girl with dwarfism named Natalia Grace, before they begin to question if she really is eight years old, like she insists.

“I’m sort of like a blue-collar worker, right?” she said. “I go to a TV show, and I’m not the cool kid or the popular kid necessarily. I’m kind of a worker bee. I think that’s been good for me.”

Good American Family will be Pompeo’s first major TV role outside of Grey’s since her time on the show began. She talked about branching out beyond the Shonda Rhimes megahit in a 2022 interview on the Drew Barrymore Show amid her step down from being a series regular (she still narrates each episode and appears onscreen sporadically).

“I mean 19 years, that’s more than people keep their kids in their house,” she said, a nod to how long she had been on Grey’s at the time. “People keep their kids in their house until they’re 18 and then they send them off to college, so this is like me, like, going away to college.”