Ellen Pompeo is a gay rights advocate and credits her passion to the cause on her upbringing. Her mother died when she was very young and her sister (along with a few gay men) stepped up to raise her.

"I was raised by drag queens, practically... My mother died when I was four-years-old, so I was effectively raised by a bunch of different people. A lot of those people were friends of my sister, Kathleen, who had all these gay friends. She would babysit me everyday, and she would take me over to her friend's houses with all kinds of things going on: tucking, and eyebrow drawing, waxing, all sorts of things. I was literally raised by gay men."