I love actors; I love seeing great performances. I just love that, when I'm seeing a performance, that inside me, I just go, 'Oh my God, how are you doing that? Where is that coming from?' Where you see an actor do something, and I can't even locate it in my own body.
— Sandra Oh
I feel like I don't really have a sense of humor... I don't know if I could characterize it dark or light. I just - I do like humor.
Self-care doesn't necessarily mean jogging!
Anyone who has been obsessed or been in a mad love affair, sometimes you don't make the right decisions.
I saw 'Joy Luck Club' when it came out, so that was early mid-'90s, and I remember seeing it with my long-time collaborator, Mina Shum. We'd just done 'Double Happiness,' and we saw this movie, and we were weeping. Like, shuddering weeping. Weeping more than really the film deserved.
Young Asian people who come up to me have a certain vibration, and I receive it, and I understand it, and I feel emotional just talking about it. I'm here for you. And I'll continue doing everything I can to fill something that I know you need right now that we don't yet have as a community.
I remember everyone in high school thought I should be a journalist because I looked like Connie Chung.
I grew up in so much church: English-speaking church, Korean church.
I take it extremely seriously to do absolutely the best work possible and the truest work possible, because I feel like that is what's going to resonate not only for myself but hopefully for an audience.
The beginning of my career was so brilliant. It wasn't until ten years later that I went, 'Oh, that was a big, fat fluke and, boy, was I ever lucky.'
I love my hair. When I was young it had weird kinks and cowlicks in it, but I just grew into it. You grow into a lot of things.
People ask me what I'm writing. They think I'm Sandra Tsing Loh. Or they ask about stand-up. 'No, that's Margaret Cho.' I really think there is this kind of glomming, that they think we are somehow all the same person.
I don't get jobs in films by auditioning. I'm not blonde. You can't place me in movies the way you can with certain actors. It's very difficult for my agents.
You should see my house. It's sort of explosive. Like a crazy person lives there.
In many Asian households, to not go on to higher education, that's like a big no-no. I know my parents' discouragement was for my own protection, and I'm really close to them now, but they didn't understand that there is value in this. That's because they didn't know.
A lot of things that I can't get into the room for, even just to be seen, is because they're just saying 'No. they're not casting non-white.' You're lumped into a category with people who are just not white.
Becoming an actor? If it's not a calling, don't do it. It's too hard.
I was very young when 'The Carol Burnett Show' came out, but that kind of comedy and the spontaneity of her, I think it really deeply affected me within just the joy of performance.
When I saw 'Fleabag,' and when this script came to me, there is a uniqueness and a dark naughtiness to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's sensibility that I did gravitate towards, very much.
There's, like, a dark needle or a nail that lives at the back of all of our heads, and that's your fear.
I am so constantly amazed by people's care and love for Cristina Yang.
Actually being able to exercise your own choice can bring about greater opportunity.
Koreans are ambitious, man. It means a lot to my parents that I do the work that I do and it has the visibility.
I'd be so fascinated to talk to a psychologist or sociologist about the deep psychological impact of seeing oneself represented. I don't think we've really touched the surface of what it does to the psyche of a people if the only image of you out there is negative. Or if it's never out there.
I truly believe that to actually be free and to be in place you can create from, you have to be able to be private.
I'm not a slave to fashion; I'm into exercising my individuality.
I feel comfortable in places like London. You get many cultures in L.A. but it's strangely segregated.
With small breasts, you don't have to wear a bra with dresses that have some support. It feels sexy without one.
I can get a better role in TV and work more constantly than I can waiting around for my friends in Canada to call me every four years - which they do - and I go up there and play a leading role.
Wherever Koreans are, they set up a church.
I think the roles in television are better for women right now. At this point, I don't want to continue doing the same things I've been doing in film because it's very limited.
And on a Canadian set, everybody is equal. You get paid the same. You live together in barracks. You have a communal kitchen. You buy and cook your own food.
I equate fame towards people who know your work, people who will see your work. But all that stuff, like with the Genies and stuff like that, it was so much fun. It's so much fun and it's nice when it comes, but that's not what it's all about.
The best thing I've ever taken from a set is the rug in Owen and Cristina's apartment on Grey's Anatomy before they broke up.
It takes a long time to free oneself from chatter - goals, social media, image, persona. And if you're able to move through in that way, you can actually start trying to create from a different place.
Thinking ahead or thinking behind is not good for me.
For me, I just am so grateful to be an actor.
I think it's just as important what you say no to as what you say yes to.
When you're able to shoot in Europe and internationally, those locations don't lie. The feeling doesn't lie, the quality of the light. You can always tell when it's shot in London.
I don't spend too much time on social media, so I can protect my mind space.
I don't think people get the pressure of becoming famous and what it does for an artist. What does that for your creative self. And what that can do for your mental health. And I would say, from year two to year six or eight of 'Grey's,' it was extremely difficult and very stressful and traumatic, if I'm being honest.
Hollywood likes to put actors in boxes, and it likes to put Asian actors in really small boxes.
If you have ever been to couples therapy it's really, really challenging.
I was lucky on 'Arli$$.' I basically got to do whatever I wanted because HBO is great for that.
All the jobs I've gotten in the last two years are because directors have seen the work I've done - indie films, plays, short student films, TV - since I moved to the states in 1996. I mean, I have an entire career in Canada that nobody has seen.
When your life changes and you become a more public person, in some ways you need to be a more closed person, you know?
I grew up never seeing myself on-screen, and it's really important to me to give people who look like me a chance to see themselves. I want to see myself as the hero of any story. I want to see myself save the world from the bomb.
As a working actor, all I want to do is work. That's it. It's terrifying when you don't work. It's very hard when you don't work. There have been times when I've been out of work for like six months. I feel theatre to me is like manna.
I think all women should learn how to strip. It's a really healthy, extremely challenging thing to do.
