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Sandra Oh Biography
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Sandra Oh
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- This is a Korean name; the family name is Oh.
| Sandra Oh | |
|---|---|
 Oh at a Writer's Guild of America protest, November 2007 |
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| Born | July 20, 1971 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1989–present |
| Spouse(s) | Alexander Payne (2003-2006; divorced) |
Sandra Oh (born July 20, 1971) is a Canadian actress. She is primarily known for her role as Dr. Cristina Yang in the ABC series Grey's Anatomy, for which she has won a Golden Globe award. She also played notable roles in the feature films Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways, and had a supporting role on the HBO original series Arli$$.
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Early life
Oh was born in Nepean, Ontario, to middle-class Korean immigrant parents Joon-Soo (John) and Young-Nam, who had come to Canada in the early 1960s. Her father is a businessman and her mother a biochemist 1 Oh grew up living on Camwood Crescent in the Ottawa2 suburb of Nepean, where she began acting and dancing ballet at an early age.3. At the age of 10, she played The Wizard of Woe in a class musical, The Canada Goose.
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 at Sir Robert Borden High School she was Student Council President. She also played the flute and continued both her ballet training and acting studies; however, she knew that she "was not good enough to be a professional dancer"3 and eventually focused solely on acting. This interest led her to take drama classes, act in school plays, and join 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 prestigious National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, paying her own way. She told her parents that she would try acting for a few years, and if that failed, return to school 4. Ironically, while studying at the National Theatre School, she portrayed a waitress in the made-for-television film, School's Out, in which her co-worker, Caitlin Ryan (Stacie Mistysyn) also considers turning down her acceptance into Carleton University's journalism program.
Soon after graduating from the National Theatre School in 1993, she starred in a London, Ontario stage production of David Mamet's Oleanna. Around the same time, she won roles in biographical TV films of two significant female Chinese-Canadians: as Vancouver author Evelyn Lau in The Diary of Evelyn Lau (Oh won the role over more than 1,000 others who auditioned); and as Adrienne Clarkson in a CBC biopic of Clarkson's life.
Oh has one brother Ray, and two sisters Grace and Kelly.
Career
Oh became even more widely known in Canada for her lead performance in the Canadian film Double Happiness, for which she won the Genie Award for Best Actress. She then went on to star in the 1997 international feature hit film Bean playing the supporting role of Bernice, the art gallery P.R. manager. Her other Canadian films include Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity and Last Night, for which she again won a Best Actress Genie.
Oh is most familiar to American audiences from her roles in the films Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways. She considers Sideways to be one of the two best movies she has made, along with Evelyn Lau.4 In the less well-known Dancing at the Blue Iguana, she played a poetry-writing stripper, performed several nude dance routines and received the movie's best reviews. On American television, she is renowned for her current role in the hit ABC medical series Grey's Anatomy, for which she has won both a 2005 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Series and a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series. In July 2009, she received her fifth consecutive Emmy nomination for her work on the series.
Oh received critical acclaim for her six seasons as Rita Wu on the HBO series Arli$$. She received an NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and a Cable Ace award for Best Actress in a Comedy for her work on Arli$$. In theatre, Oh has also starred in the world premieres of Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters at the La Jolla Playhouse and Diana Son's Stop Kiss at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York City. She made several guest appearances on the series Popular (1999) playing a humanities teacher. She has also guest starred in the television series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Judging Amy, Six Feet Under, and Odd Job Jack.
In 2006, she costarred in the film The Night Listener as "Anna," alongside Robin Williams and Toni Collette. In her only audiobook, she played Brigid O'Shaughnessy in a Grammy nominated dramatization of The Maltese Falcon (2008), which also featured Michael Madsen and Edward Herrmann.
She also has done a few voice roles in animation, including a few guest appearances in American Dragon: Jake Long and the voice of Doofah in The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends.
Oh was host of the 28th Genie Awards on March 3, 2008.5
Personal life
Oh and Sideways filmmaker Alexander Payne were in a relationship for five years. They married on January 1, 2003, separated in early 2005 and divorced in late 2006.6
Filmography
Short subjects
- The Journey Home (1989)
- Prey (1995)
- Cowgirl (1996)
- Three Lives of Kate (2000) (narrator)
- Barrier Device (2002)
- 8 Minutes to Love (2004)
- Falling (2007)
Television
References
- ^ "Sandra Oh Biography". Film Reference. http://www.filmreference.com/film/44/Sandra-Oh.html. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
- ^ "The Winding Career of Sandra Oh". NPR. 23 November 2004. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4183846. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
- ^ a b "Sandra Oh on the Challenge of Being Korean in Hollywood". The Chosun Ilbo. 13 April 2007. http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200704/200704130012.html. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
- ^ a b Posner, Michael (12 May 2007). "Sandra Oh's Doing Just Fine: Profile". Toronto Globe and Mail: pp. R6-R7. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070512.wxoh12/BNStory/Entertainment. Retrieved 2007-05-30.
- ^ "Awards Ceremony Host biography". http://www.genieawards.ca/Genie28/host.cfm.
- ^ Lee, Ken; Stephen M. Silverman (27 December 2006). "Sandra Oh's Marriage Is Officially Over". People Magazine. http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20005420,00.html. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
External links
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