Grey’s Anatomy’s biggest guest stars who stole our hearts

While the former child star was no stranger to the screen when she made a one-episode appearance in 2007. Elisabeth was certainly not the household name she is today.

The Handmaid’s Tale actor played Nina, a protective daughter who was the full-time carer of her mother. Who suffered from a rare disorder that caused her muscles to turn to bone.

It was a few months after her guest spot that Elisabeth’s career trajectory changed with the premiere of Mad Men. The now 43-year-old starred as the plucky Peggy Olson. A role which earned her five Emmy nominations. The new mother is now a two-time Emmy winner and a bona fide movie star with hits like The Invisible Man and The French Dispatch.

Before she landed a part in the hit Netflix series Stranger Things. Millie was a child actor trying to make a name for herself. Appearing in guest spots on shows like Modern Family and NCIS.

In 2015, she popped up in Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital as a young girl trying to save her mother’s life with some assistance from Owen Hunt. Kevin McKidd plays the character who appears after an earthquake strikes her on the head.

One year later, she made her first appearance as the fearsome Eleven in Stranger Things and her career has gone from strength to strength. Millie, 21, recently starred alongside Chris Pratt in the sci-fi adventure The Electric State and married Jake, Jon Bon Jovi’s son.

The Thor: Ragnarok star made appearances as two different characters within creator Shonda Rhimes’ universe. Her first role was as Richard Webber’s niece Camille, who, at 14, learns her ovarian cancer has returned.

Three years later, the 41-year-old had a two-episode arc in the spin-off Private Practice. As a patient who accidentally has had someone else’s embryo implanted in her.

Now Tessa is not only a frequent star in the Marvel world. But critics have also praised her acting, earning her multiple Bafta and Emmy Award nominations.

The long-running soap has depicted countless outrageous medical situations. But the moment that many fans argue takes the cake occurred in season two when a patient arrives with a bomb lodged in his chest.

Kyle, 59, starred as Dylan Young, the bomb squad leader brought in to figure out how to get the explosive out without it detonating. After hours of Meredith. Played by Ellen Pompeo, holding the bomb securely in place inside the body, they safely remove it and she hands it off to him only
for it to explode in Dylan’s hands.

Kyle fought to rewrite his story and dodge being blown up, Shonda, 55, said.

“I would show him the line in the script that said, ‘Dylan explodes.’ That’s literally all it said. He was written to explode.”

But he need not have worried. His breakthrough role came a few months later as the beloved Coach Taylor in Friday Night Lights.

Most fans will recognise Kate Burton as the face of Meredith’s talented but detached mother Ellis Grey. But for one episode in 2010, writers took the audience even further back into the controversial character’s past.

Sarah, 50, played Ellis as a resident in the ’80s who must fight for her patient who has AIDS, then called GRID, to receive care. Though this certainly wasn’t Sarah’s biggest role, it wasn’t until 2011 when she began collaborating with Ryan Murphy on projects like American Horror Story and Ratched, that she became the international name she is today.

Ryan will cast her to star in his latest project, All’s Fair, a legal drama he describes as “a high-end, glossy and sexy adult procedural.”