Sandra Oh Net Worth And Biography

Sandra Miju Oh is a Canadian-American actress with a net worth of $25 million. She is best known for her role as Rita Wu in Arliss (1996-2002), as Dr Cristina Yang in Grey’s Anatomy (2005-2014), and, Eve Polastri in Killing Eve (2018-2022). Also, she was once named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world (2019). This article is a further detailing of Sandra Oh’s net worth, biography, and career according to Wikipedia and Yahoo Finance.

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Bio-Data

Biography

Sandra Oh was born on the 20th of July, 1971, in Nepean, Ontario. Her mother, Jeon Young-Nam was a middle-class South Korean immigrant and Biochemist while her father, Oh Jun-Su (John) was a businessman. She has a brother, Ray, and a sister, Grace with whom she grew up in a Christian household, residing on Camwood Crescent in Nepean. Sandra Oh began acting and practising ballet at the age of four with the aim of correcting her pigeon-toed stance. And while growing up, she was one of the few youths of Asian descent in Nepean.

When she was ten, she played The Wizard of Woe in a class musical, The Canada Goose. Later on, she founded the environmental club BASE (Borden Active Students for the Environment) at Sir Robert Borden High School, leading a campaign against the use of styrofoam cups. While still in high school, she was elected student council president. She also played the flute and alongside that, faced her ballet training and acting studies.

However, she knew she was not good enough to be a professional dancer and hence, eventually focused on acting. She further took drama classes, acted in school plays, and joined the school drama club where she took part in the Canadian Improv Games and Skit Row High, a comedy group. She decided against following her parents’ advice and chose to study acting at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, paying for herself, instead of accepting a four-year journalism scholarship to Carleton University. Sandra Oh promised her parent that she wanted to try acting for a few years and would return to acting if it failed.

Early Career

In a recount, she had said, “I am the only person in my family who doesn’t have a master’s in something”. Following her graduation from The National Theatre School in 1993, she starred in a stage production of David Mamet’s Oleanna in London, Ontario. Around the same time, she won roles in biographical TV films of two significant female Chinese-Canadians: Vancouver author Evelyn Lau in The Diary of Evelyn Lau. There, she won the role over more than 1,000 others who auditioned for the role.

Sandra Oh first came to the limelight in her home country for her lead role in the Canadian film, Double Happiness (1994) where she played the character Jade Li. The film received critical acclaim, with Roger Ebert praising Sandra Oh’s “warm performance”. Also, Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised her performance, saying: “Ms Oh’s performance makes Jade a smart, spiky heroine you won’t soon forget. Afterwards, she won the Genie Award for Best Actress for her role in the film.

Early Film Projects

In 1997, she appeared in Bean where she played the supporting role of Bernice, the art gallery PR manager. She also worked in other Canadian films such as Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity and Last Night (1998) which earned her a Best Actress Genie. Thereafter, she was cast in Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000) where she played a stripper at an adult dance club opposite Daryl Hannah. Although the film received passable reviews, Sandra Oh’s performance was praised. In the same year, she appeared in Waking the Dead. In 2002, Sandra Oh appeared in the family comedy, Big Fat Liar, and then got a minor role in Full Frontal.

2003-2004

Sandra Oh received several critical acclaims for her role as Rita Wu in the six seasons of the Arliss series. Her role earned her a nomination for an NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and a Cable Ace Award for Best Actress in a Comedy. Thereafter, she made several guest appearances on the Popular series where she played a humanities teacher. She also guest starred in the television series, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Judging Amy, Six Feet Under and Odd Job Jack.

In theatre, Sandra Oh 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 Theater in New York City. Then in 2003, she was cast in a supporting role opposite Diane Lane in Under the Tuscan Sun. And then, she had a supporting role in Sideways (2004).

Career Breakthrough

In 2005, Sandra Oh appeared in several films including Hard Candy, and 3 Needles, and was also cast as Cristina Yang in the first season of the world-famous ABC medical series, Grey’s Anatomy. Her long-running role on the show earned her 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 a fifth consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for her work on the series. Four years after (August 2013), she announced that the tenth season of the show would be her final season.

While on the Grey’s Anatomy project, she also appeared in films — including The Night Listener (2006), Defendor (2009), Ramona and Beezus (2010), and Rabbit Hole (2010).

In her audiobook, she played Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (2008) which also featured Michael Madsen and Edward Herrmann. She also had voicing roles in animations including a few guest appearances in American Dragon: Jake Long. She voiced Princess Ting-Ting in Mulan II, and Doofah in The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends.

2008-2011

Sandra Oh was the host of the 28th Genie Awards on March 3, 2008. The following year, she performed in The People Speak. During the off-season hiatus from filming Grey’s Anatomy in 2010, she played Sarah Chen in Thorne for which she took intensive dialect coaching so she could play her British character.

On the 28th of June, 2011, it was announced that Sandra Oh would receive a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, and she was inducted on the 1st of October at Elgin Theatre in Toronto. In 2013, Sandra Oh finally left the Grey Anatomy series on the season 10 finale as she had earlier announced.

2014-2017

In October 2014, Sandra Oh announced that she would be working with Ann Marie Fleming on an animated feature film, Window Horses. The same year, she appeared in a supporting role in Tammy where she played the wife of Kathy Bate’s character.

She appeared in the comic online series Shitty Boyfriends on Refinery29 in 2015. In December 2015, Sarah Oh started shooting the comedy Catfight in New York City. And in the third season of the anthology drama series American Crime in 2017, she played Abby Tanaka.

2018

Sandra Oh started playing a major role in the BBC iPlayer spy thriller series Killing Eve in April 2018. She claimed that after years of playing the best friend to the leads, she had become “brainwashed” and had no idea she was being considered for the main part until she read the series script. The show received a second season renewal prior to its release, and a third season renewal was revealed less than a day after the second season’s American premiere. Shortly after, Killing Eve‘s fourth season was also confirmed.

Sandra Oh has received praise for her work on the show, with Jenna Scherer praising her as “a compulsively compelling actor – expressive and sophisticated, melding sharp wit and deep melancholy” in Rolling Stone. When she was named the best actress in television right now by Vulture, critic Matt Zoller Seitz wrote: “It’s a show-stopping performance, but it’s so humble and undetectable in its effects that you leave thinking you watched a gripping story with interesting characters rather than a historical landmark. This is a really sophisticated magic trick.”

For that portrayal, Oh made history in 2018 by becoming the first actress of Asian origin to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She became the first person of Asian origin to win two Golden Globe Awards when she won the award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama. And she took home the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 2019.

2020-2022

Sandra Oh voiced Castaspella in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, an animated superhero series, from 2018 to 2020. She and Andy Samberg shared the hosting duties for the 76th Golden Globe Awards in 2019. Sandra Oh was the first woman of Asian ancestry to host the ceremony. She was only the third actress of Asian ancestry following Awkwafina and Lucy Liu in 2000 and 2019 before becoming the first Asian-Canadian woman to host Saturday Night Live. In the Disney animated picture Raya and the Last Dragon, Virana, the chieftain of the Fang group, was voiced by Sandra Oh in 2021.

In the animated drama series Invincible, Sandra Oh voiced the character Debbie Grayson. Amazon Prime Video hosted the series launch in 2021. It is based on the same-named comic book series. And in the same year, she served as an executive producer and took the lead role in The Chair.

In 2022, Sandra Oh voiced the role of Ming Lee in the Pixar animated film, Turning Red. And she joined Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s short story collection Stone Mattress.

Sandra Oh’s Net Worth

Currently, Sandra Oh’s net worth is estimated at $25 million.

Personal Life

Alexander Payne and Sandra Oh dated for five years. They got hitched in January 2003 and got divorced in late 2006 after becoming separated in early 2005. On the 8th of July 2013, she received the key to the city of Ottawa from Mayor Jim Watson.

Sandra Oh engages in the Buddhist meditation technique known as Vipassanā. And her acting is influenced by a loosely organised creative group that teaches “creative dream work,” which is said to combine method acting with Jungian dream analysis in order to bring one’s “subconscious work into consciousness.”

In 2018, she became a citizen of the United States. Also, she was awarded the National Arts Centre Award from the Governor General of Canada in 2019 as a part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards.

In June 2022, Sandra Oh was named an officer of the Order of Canada. Later in the same year, as a recent inductee to the Order, she was part of the people included in the Canadian delegation to the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth.