THE STORY OF OH.

SIDEWAYS (Film); GREY'S Anatomy (TV program)

This article presents a profile of Canadian actress Sandra Oh, who appeared in the film "Sideways," and has separated from her husband, director Alexander Payne. Sandra Oh has offered to cook me breakfast, which surprised her publicist. The Canadian actress -- best known as the single mother who falls for a womanizer in Sideways, and as the grasping intern in the ABC hospital show Grey's Anatomy -- has kept her home off limits to journalists. The rambling north Hollywood house is what's left of her two-year marriage to Sideways director Alexander Payne, who moved out last spring. Late on a Saturday morning, Oh answers the door looking sleepy, and says she just woke up 20 minutes earlier. After seeing Oh beat a guy to a pulp with a motorcycle helmet in Sideways, and treat surgery as competitive sport in Grey's Anatomy, you might expect her to be scary. But in person she has a playful, almost giddy exuberance. The daughter of a biochemist mother and entrepreneur father, Oh was born in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean. Sandra shocked her traditional Korean parents by choosing the National Theatre School over university. Right after graduating, in 1993, she starred in The Diary of Evelyn Lau, a CBC TV movie based on the raw memoir of a junkie prostitute in Vancouver -- confirming the worst fears of her parents who saw acting as a gateway to drugs and prostitution. Moving to L.A., and accepting a steady role as an assistant in HBO's Arli$$, Oh continued to star in Canadian movies, such as Don McKellar's Last Night (1998) -- accumulating a level of experience unavailable to her American peers. Oh has fought a constant battle with typecasting. It's not just that she's Asian, it's that she doesn't fit a certain Asian stereotype. On camera, Oh defies cliches of beauty.