Kate Walsh planned to stay on Grey's Anatomy for only five episodes.

Fortunately for everyone, her strength and charm, mixed with plenty of inner vulnerability, turned Dr. McDreamy's cheating wife into a flawed fan favorite.

After three years as Addison Montgomery-Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy, Walsh was given her own spinoff, Private Practice, slated for the fall of 2007.

A native of San Jose, and graduate of the Tucson, Ariz., Catalina Magnet High School (see photo below, left) and the University of Arizona, who once donned a fat suit (below, right) to play Drew Carey's girlfriend, Nicki Fifer, Walsh has certainly come into her own.

The red-headed late bloomer has also found love with Alex Young, a 20th Century Fox executive, whom she plans to marry.

Here are five Kate Walsh fun facts, courtesy of People magazine:

1. As a teenager, Kate Walsh's stepfather, a prison psychologist, paid her $5 a page to type psychological profiles of inmates he treated.
2. The romantic comedy, The Sweetest Thing, starring Cameron Diaz, was written by Kate Walsh's best friend, Nancy Pimental, who based the film's female characters on the two of them.
3. An opera fanatic, Kate overlooked some bizarre antics of a date in the 1990s because he had tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. "I get into the car, and the first thing this guy does is spray me with perfume. I don't even know where it came from. Maybe it belonged to the last woman he killed?"
4. Kate Walsh played the lesbian lover of none other than Grey's Anatomy star Sandra Oh in the 2003 comedy-drama, Under the Tuscan Sun.
5. Kate Walsh's last job before her star-turning role on Grey's Anatomy was playing a transvestite Las Vegas showgirl named Mimosa on CSI in 2004.

 

Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.