Born and raised in Ottawa, Canada, Sandra started ballet lessons at the age of four and appeared in her first play The Canada Goose at the age of ten. She started working professionally at age sixteen in television, theatre and commercials. After three years at the prestigious National Theatre School of Canada, she beat out more than 1,000 other hopefuls and landed the coveted title role in the CBC telefilm “The Diary of Evelyn Lau” based on the true story of a tortured poet who ran away from home and ended up a drug addict and prostitute on the streets of Vancouver. Her performance brought her a Gemini (Canada’s Emmy) nomination for Best Actress and the 1994 Cannes FIPA d’Or for Best Actress.
Oh currently stars in BBC America’s critically acclaimed smash hit “Killing Eve” for which she won a historic Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series and 2018 and 2019 Emmy Award nominations for Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She has also received Critics’ Choice and SAG Award nominations for this role. Additionally, she hosted the 2019 Golden Globe Awards alongside Andy Samberg. The 3rd season of “Killing Eve” is set to premiere is set to premiere this spring, and ahead of the premiere BBC America has renewed the show for season 4.
Sandra won a Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for her role as Dr. Cristina Yang on the hit ABC series “Grey’s Anatomy,” as well she received two Emmy Award nominations. Previously, Sandra starred in the enormously successful Fox Searchlight feature film Sideways, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
On stage, Sandra starred in Death and the Maiden at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago and completed a sold-out run of the World Premiere of Satellites at New York’s Public Theater for playwright Diana Son. She won her first Genie Award (Canada’s Oscar) for her leading role in Double Happiness, a bittersweet coming-of-age story about a young Chinese-Canadian woman – a performance that brought her much acclaim and secured her place as one of Canada’s rising young film stars. Never straying far from her theatre roots, Sandra 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, a role for which she received a Theatre World award. She also performed the Vagina Monologues in New York. Recently, Oh was back at The Public in New York, in Hansol Jung’s “Wild Goose Dreams” which participated in the 2016 Sundance MENA workshop in Morocco.
Sandra was previously seen in the British production of Thorne: Scaredy Cat. Her additional feature film credits include Tammy, Defendor, Blindness, The Night Listener, For Your Consideration, Three Needles, Long Life Happiness and Prosperity, Under the Tuscan Sun, Sorry Haters, Ramona and Beezus, Rick, Bean, Guinevere, The Red Violin, Waking the Dead, The Princess Diaries, and Pay or Play. She also starred in Michael Radford’s improvised Dancing at the Blue Iguana, a bleak and raw view of life in a strip club in Los Angeles. Her performance in Last Night, a Canadian film about the end of the world, led to her winning a second Genie Award for Best Actress in 1999. Most recently, she starred in “Catfight” opposite Anne Heche, and the animated feature “Window Horses”.
She moved to Los Angeles in 1996 to begin the first of six seasons as Rita Wu, the smart and sassy assistant on the HBO comedy series “Arliss,” for which she won the final Cable Ace award for Best Actress in a Comedy. Her additional television credits include HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” and Showtime’s “Further Tales of the City.”
Sandra resides in Los Angeles.