Why Ellen Pompeo hasn't been in the movies for over 20 years

After 20 seasons of playing the surgeon, the 56-year-old actress finally changes direction in Good American Family, this evening on TF1. For her, it is “a new career that is beginning”. Encounter.

Yes, she still appears from time to time on Grey’s Anatomy. For strictly financial reasons.

But at 56, Ellen Pompeo clearly wants to turn the hospital page of her career. We find her today on TF1 in Good American Family, a sordid family drama, in which she plays an adoptive mother the polar opposite of Meredith Grey. A real treat for the star, who never had the opportunity to diversify his horizons after two decades in Seattle’s operating theaters.

The proof: Ellen Pompeo has not appeared in a movie in more than 20 years! She, who seduced Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can (2002) or Ben Affleck in Daredevil (2003), has not filmed for the big screen since Secrets Between Friends (2005), a dramatic comedy that went completely unnoticed. Two decades without a single film for a star like Ellen Pompeo? It’s totally accepted!

“Yes, it’s true,” replies the actress that Première was able to meet. She explains the reasons for this Hollywood anomaly:

“You should know that the schedule for Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t really leave room for making films or other things on the side. We filmed for 10 consecutive months at the time. That barely leaves time to make a small film between May and June. Like a little romantic comedy before resuming filming Grey’s Anatomy… So I never really had time to make films. And then, the rest, that is to say my personal life, always had no longer important to me. I’ve been a mother for 15 years and every time I had a break during Grey’s Anatomy, I preferred to go and see my family. I’ve never had an exciting enough proposition that justified me making a film between two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, even if it meant not seeing my family.

From now on, Ellen Pompeo only films a few days a year in the white corridors of Grey’s Anatomy. His children have grown up. And she feels that Hollywood is interested in her in a different way: “I believe that at the age I am now, I will be offered more interesting things,” assures the 55-year-old actress. “When you’re a young actress, you’re cast because you know how to act well, but also because you’re pretty and sexy! Now that I’m an older woman, I feel like I’m being offered deeper, more complex roles to play. It’s like a new career beginning!”

And so she begins with this role of bad mother against the job, in Good American Family, on Disney Plus. A mini-series adapted from a chilling true story: that of Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian child suffering from dwarfism, adopted by an American couple, the Barnetts, who later accused her of being an adult pretending to be a child…

“Natalia’s story was very popular in the United States, because there was this documentary, L’Énigme Natalia Grace (to watch on Max in France, Editor’s note), that everyone was watching two years ago. I didn’t see it, but many of my friends told me about it,” continues Ellen Pompeo. “They said it was a crazy story and above all, everyone had a different opinion on what had really happened. Everyone had seen the same documentary, but had learned different things from it. They didn’t agree on who was responsible in this story. I remember that it had a big impact on me.”

And the actress tells us that when the creator, Katie Robbins, presented her with the script, she insisted on the notion of perspective: “Depending on the prism through which we look at this story, we believe different versions. And the documentary is thus divided into two parts: the point of view of Michael Barnett first, then that of Natalia, and that’s where we see things completely differently. It completely puts the first part into perspective. And that’s what we wanted to recreate in the series.”

In any case, for Ellen Pompeo, there is no doubt: Kristine Barnett is a real villain… and this is what motivated her to relaunch her career by accepting the role: