Sandra Oh

Oh was born in Nepean, Ontario, to middle-class Korean immigrant parents Joon-Soo and Young-Nam, who had come to Canada in the early 1960s. Her father is a businessman and her mother a biochemist. Oh grew up living on Camwood Crescent in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean, where she began acting and dancing ballet at an early age. 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. 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 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. 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 also considers turning down her acceptance into Carelton University's journalism programme.

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 and as Adrienne Clarkson in a CBC biopic of Clarkson's life.

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. 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.

Oh and Sideways filmmaker Alexander Payne 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 and Ontario Cancer Institute. Her sister Grace is a crown attorney and mother of two children in Vancouver, British Columbia.