The dark, back office of a Georgian house in Bloomsbury is an incongruous place to be interviewing Ellen Pompeo. But that's where The Telegraph (U.K.) tracked her down for the second of two exceptional interviews we've found featuring the Grey's Anatomy star this week.
Yes, it's a far cry from the sun-baked Los Angeles lot where Pompeo is usually to be found, in scrubs, as the title character in Grey's Anatomy.
Dr. Meredith Grey - brisk, vulnerable, self-destructive, talented - is a lead unlike any other on American television, and her gripping screen presence and romantic train wrecks hook 20 million viewers a week.
In its annual "Celebrity 100" power list, Forbes ranked Pompeo and her co-stars number 12, while the Desperate Housewives cast fell to 47.

Yet in Britain, where the drama is the main draw on the digital channel Living with reruns on Five, Ellen Pompeo is hardly a household name.
Male critics have sniffed at the 'vapid' scripts and 'mawkish' acting in the drama about five trainee surgeons at a Seattle hospital.
But Ellen Pompeo's portrayal of a woman totally competent in her work and an utter disaster in her relationships has forced even veteran Hollywood producers to examine how a lead wh's such a mess - prone to getting drunk in bars and picking up strangers - can prove so compelling.
The tabloids have focused on Pompeo's weight (she's supposedly anorexic), behavior on set (she's supposedly a diva) and, since her November engagement, the colorful past of her fiancé Chris Ivery, a record producer, and the size of the engagement ring he gave her.
This, a dazzling oblong diamond, has caused Ellen Pompeo so much angst that she is even now twisting it off her tiny hand.
'Completely garish, isn't it?' she asks. 'He got it in Beverly Hills and spent his entire life savings, which I could kill him for. I was very mad about it. Some days I really love it, and some days I just want to sell it and give the money to charity. All the magazines care about is the size. I think, "Oh, it's absolute rubbish and I'd like to throw the ring in the sewer."'
Continue reading The Telegraph's lengthy, revealing interview with Ellen Pompeo after the jump ...
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