Sandra Oh

Sandra Oh (born July 20, 1971, Nepean (now Ottawa), Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian American actress who helped break barriers for Asian women in the entertainment industry and who is especially known for portraying strong female characters, notably on the television shows Grey’s Anatomy and Killing Eve.

Oh’s parents were immigrants from South Korea. Her father was a businessman, and her mother was a biochemist. Oh began acting in school plays at an early age. While in high school she joined the drama club and participated in the comedy group Skit Row High. She embarked on a professional acting career while a teenager. Her credits included television commercials, a bit part in a TV show, and the short film The Journey Home (1989). In 1993 Oh graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal.

That year Oh landed the lead role in the Canadian television drama The Diary of Evelyn Lau. In 1994 she starred in the film Double Happiness and won critical praise for her performance as a young Chinese woman trying to balance a traditional upbringing with a modern lifestyle. In 1996 Oh moved to Los Angeles to film the HBO comedy Arli$$. She played the character Rita Wu, an assistant to a sports agent, for all seven seasons that the show aired. Meanwhile, Oh was cast in minor parts in films such as Bean (1997) and The Red Violin (1998). Supporting roles in the popular movies The Princess Diaries (2001), Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), and Sideways (2004) helped her reach a wider audience.

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In 2005 Oh was cast on the television series Grey’s Anatomy. She spent 10 seasons playing ambitious physician Cristina Yang on the medical drama. During that time she won Screen Actors Guild awards both for her solo work and as part of an ensemble cast. She also won a Golden Globe Award for best supporting actress in a TV series (2006) and earned five Primetime Emmy Award nominations for best supporting actress in a drama series. Oh left the show in 2014 to pursue other acting opportunities.

From 2018 to 2022 Oh starred in the BBC America spy series Killing Eve, created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Critics praised Oh’s portrayal of an intelligence agent who becomes obsessed with a female assassin (played by Jodie Comer). Oh won several awards for her role, including a Golden Globe in 2019 for best actress in a television drama series. Oh thus became the first woman of Asian heritage to win multiple Golden Globes. That same year she earned a Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by a woman in a drama series. In addition, in 2018 she became the first woman of Asian heritage to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy for lead actress in a drama series. Oh later received three additional Emmy nods for her acting in Killing Eve. During this time she also starred in The Chair (2021), which aired on Netflix. The six-episode comedy drama centers on a university’s English department that is struggling amid various crises.

While working in television, Oh continued to act in movies. Her later films include the comedy Tammy (2014), the black comedy Catfight (2016), and the drama Meditation Park (2017). In 2023 she starred with Awkwafina and Will Ferrell in the comedy Quiz Lady, which won the 2024 Emmy Award for outstanding TV movie. The following year Oh appeared in the sci-fi film Can I Get a Witness? and the TV miniseries The Sympathizer, an adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

In the early 21st century Oh voiced characters for such animated television series as American Dad!, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Invincible. She lent her voice to several animated movies as well, including Over the Moon (2020), Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), and Turning Red (2022).

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