Sandra Oh Quotes

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.

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.’

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.

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.

With small breasts, you don’t have to wear a bra with dresses that have some support. It feels sexy without one.

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.

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.

You should see my house. It’s sort of explosive. Like a crazy person lives there.

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 remember everyone in high school thought I should be a journalist because I looked like Connie Chung.

If you have ever been to couples therapy it’s really, really challenging.

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.

I think all women should learn how to strip. It’s a really healthy, extremely challenging thing to do.

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.

I’m not a slave to fashion; I’m into exercising my individuality.

Becoming an actor? If it’s not a calling, don’t do it. It’s too hard.

Hollywood likes to put actors in boxes, and it likes to put Asian actors in really small boxes.

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.

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.

I was lucky on ‘Arli$$.’ I basically got to do whatever I wanted because HBO is great for that.

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.

When your life changes and you become a more public person, in some ways you need to be a more closed person, you know?

Self-care doesn’t necessarily mean jogging!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thinking ahead or thinking behind is not good for me.

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 am so constantly amazed by people’s care and love for Cristina Yang.

I grew up in so much church: English-speaking church, Korean church.

For me, I just am so grateful to be an actor.