Sandra Oh

Sandra Oh is a Golden Globe Award-winning and Emmy Award-nominated Canadian actress. She is known to American audiences for her role as Dr. Cristina Yang in the ABC series Grey's Anatomy and her roles in the feature films, Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways. In 2005, Oh made People magazine's list of the 50 Most Beautiful People. Oh has also won the Screen Actors Guild's award and Genie Award twice each.



Quick Fact
Birthday : July 20, 1971
Sign : Gemini
Birthplace : Nepean, Ontario, Canada
Height : 5' 6" (1.68 m)
Nickname :



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 late 1960s. Her father is businessman and her mother a biochemist. Oh grew up living on Camwood Crescent in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, Ontario, where she began dancing and acting at an early age. For example, at the age of 10, she played "The Wizard of Woe" in a class play, "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. While in high school, she 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" and eventually solely focussed 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 National Theatre School 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.

Soon after graduating theatre school, 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 bio-pic of Clarkson's life.



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. Her other Canadian films include Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity and Last Night, for which she again won a Best Actress Genie. Oh also won FIPA d'Or Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival for her role in The Diary of Evelyn Lau.

Oh is most familiar to American audiences from her roles in the popular 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. In the less well-known Dancing at the Blue Iguana, she played a poetry-writing stripper and performed several dance routines. 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 2006 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 2006, she received her second 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, American Dragon: Jake Long, 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. Although Oh remains active in feature films, the critically acclaimed Grey's Anatomy remains her primary current occupation.



Personal life
Oh and American filmmaker Alexander Payne (who made Sideways, which starred Oh) were in a relationship for five years, including two years of marriage; they married on January 1, 2003. Payne and Oh separated in early 2005 and divorced in late 2006. Oh is currently dating musician Andrew Featherston.

Oh's brother, Ray, is completing a Ph.D. in medical genetics at the University of Toronto. Her sister Grace is a crown attorney and mother of two children in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Source : Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia