Sandra Miju Oh[8] was born in Nepean, Ontario, on July 20, 1971, the daughter of middle-class South Korean immigrants Oh Young-nam, a biochemist, and Oh Jun-su (John), a businessperson.[9][10] Her parents had moved to the area in the early 1960s.[11] She has a brother, Ray, and a sister, Grace, and grew up in a Christian household, living on Camwood Crescent in Nepean, where she began acting and practicing ballet at age four to correct her pigeon-toed stance.[12] Growing up, Oh was one of the few youths of Asian descent in Nepean.[13][14]
At age ten, Oh played The Wizard of Woe in a class musical called The Canada Goose.[15][8][16] Later, at Sir Robert Borden High School, she founded the environmental club BASE (Borden Active Students for the Environment), leading a campaign against the use of styrofoam cups. While in high school, she was elected student council president. She also played the flute and continued both her ballet training and acting studies, though she knew that she "was not good enough to be a professional dancer"[12] and eventually focused on acting. She took drama classes, acted in school plays, and joined the drama club, where she took part in the Canadian Improv Games and Skit Row High, a comedy group. Against her parents' advice, she rejected a four-year journalism scholarship to Carleton University to study drama at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, paying her own way.
Oh told her parents that she would try acting for a few years, and promised to return to university if it failed.[8] Reflecting on foregoing university, she has said that she is "the only person in [her] family who doesn't have a master's in something".[17] Soon after graduating from the National Theatre School in 1993, she starred in a stage production of David Mamet's Oleanna in London, Ontario.[18][19] Around the same time, she won roles in biographical television films of two significant female Chinese-Canadians: as Vancouver author Evelyn Lau in The Diary of Evelyn Lau, where she won the role over more than 1,000 others who auditioned, and as Adrienne Clarkson in a CBC biopic of Clarkson's life.[20]
Career
1994–2004: Early work
Oh came to prominence in her home country for her lead performance in the Canadian film Double Happiness (1994), playing Jade Li, a twenty-something Chinese-Canadian woman negotiating her wishes and those of her parents. The film received critical acclaim, with Roger Ebert praising Oh's "warm performance".[21]Janet Maslin of The New York Times also praised her performance, saying: "Ms. Oh's performance makes Jade a smart, spiky heroine you won't soon forget."[22] Oh won the Genie Award for Best Actress for the role. In 1995 she appeared in the Canadian film Little Criminals with a multi-scene, but uncredited, performance.[23]
In 1997 she appeared in the film Bean, playing the supporting role of Bernice, the art gallery PR manager. Her other Canadian films include Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity and Last Night (1998), for which she again won a Best Actress Genie. She was cast in the drama Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000), playing a stripper at an adult dance club opposite Daryl Hannah. The film received mediocre reviews,[24] though Oh was praised for her performance. The New York Times review said, "Oh make[s] the most of [her] opportunity to explore the vulnerability below [her] characters' hard-edged surface."[25] The same year, she appeared in the drama Waking the Dead. In 2002, Oh appeared in the family comedy Big Fat Liar, followed by a minor role in Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal (2002).
Oh garnered critical acclaim for her six seasons as Rita Wu, the assistant to the president of a major sports agency, on the HBO series Arliss, receiving a nomination for an NAACPImage Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and a Cable Ace award for Best Actress in a Comedy for her work. She also made several guest appearances on the series Popular (1999) playing a humanities teacher and guest starred in the television seriesKung Fu: The Legend Continues, Judging Amy, Six Feet Under and Odd Job Jack.
In 2003, she was cast in a supporting role opposite Diane Lane in Under the Tuscan Sun, followed by a supporting role in Alexander Payne's drama Sideways (2004). She considers Sideways and The Diary of Evelyn Lau to be the two best films she has made.[8]
Oh was the host of the 28th Genie Awards on March 3, 2008.[26] In 2009, Oh performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.[27] During the off-season hiatus from filming Grey's Anatomy in 2010, Oh took the part of Sarah Chen in the British crime drama, Thorne. She undertook intensive dialect coaching in order to play her British character.[28]
On June 28, 2011, it was announced that Oh would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame; she was inducted on October 1 at Elgin Theatre in Toronto.[29] In 2013, Oh formally announced that she would be leaving Grey's Anatomy at the end of the tenth season.[30][31] Oh exited the series with the season 10 finale.[32]
2014–present: Film roles and Killing Eve
In October 2014, Oh announced that she would be teaming up with Canadian director Ann Marie Fleming to collaborate on an animated feature film titled Window Horses.[33] She also appeared in a supporting role in the comedy film Tammy (2014), playing the wife of Kathy Bates' character.
Oh in 2016
In 2015, she starred on the Refinery29 comedy web seriesShitty Boyfriends. Oh began filming the comedy film, Catfight (2016), in New York City in December 2015.[34] In 2017, Oh starred as Abby Tanaka in the third season of the anthology drama series American Crime.[35]
Beginning in April 2018, Oh began a leading role in the BBC America and BBC Three spy thriller series Killing Eve, playing British intelligence agent Eve Polastri whose quarry is psychopathic assassin Villanelle (played by Jodie Comer), with the two women developing a mutual fascination.[36] Upon reading the series script, Oh did not realize she was being considered for a leading role, stating that she had been "brainwashed" by years of being typecast as the leads' best friend.[36] The series was renewed for a second season ahead of its debut,[36] and a third was announced less than a day after the second premiered in the United States.[37]Killing Eve was also renewed for a fourth season shortly after.
In 2023, Oh played the role of Jenny Yum, a brash, outgoing, and impulsive older sister of the main character in the 20th Century Studios comedy film Quiz Lady.[49]
Her upcoming projects include Good Fortune directed by Aziz Ansari.[50]
Personal life
Oh was in a relationship with filmmaker Alexander Payne for five years. They married in January 2003, separated in early 2005, and divorced in late 2006.[51]
Oh practices Vipassanā, a Buddhist form of meditation.[53] Her work in acting is informed by a loose creative collective that teaches "creative dream work", which reportedly fuses Jungian dream analysis with method acting and aims to bring one's "subconscious work into consciousness".[53]
Oh became a US citizen in 2018. On the first anniversary of her citizenship, she discussed it while hosting Saturday Night Live and referred to herself as an "Asian-Canadian-American".[54][55]
Oh was awarded the National Arts Centre Award from the Governor General of Canada in 2019, as a part of the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards.[56]
On March 22, 2021, Oh gave a speech at a Stop Asian Hate rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in response to the Atlanta spa shootings. She encouraged people "to reach out to the Asian American community", stating that they were "very scared".[58]
I'm gonna be very, very brief, but one thing I know, many of us in our community are very scared, and I understand that, and one way to try to kind of go through– get through our fear is to reach out to our communities.....I will challenge everyone here: if you see something, will you help me? If you see one of our brothers and sisters in need, will you help us?...I am proud to be Asian! I wanna hear you say, I am proud to be Asian! I belong here! I am proud to be Asian! I belong here! Many of us don't get the chance to be able to say that, so I just wanted to give us an opportunity to be able to shout that.[59]
^Ebert, Roger (August 25, 1995). "Double Happiness Movie Review". The Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on April 25, 2016. Retrieved April 17, 2016.
^ abcdefghijklm"Sandra Oh (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved July 20, 2024. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its credits or other reliable sources of information.
Canadian Film Awards 1968–1978, Genie Awards 1980-2011, Canadian Screen Awards 2012–present. Separate awards were presented by gender prior to 2022; a single unified category for best performance regardless of gender has been presented since.
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