Sandra Oh On Finding Good Film Roles And Working On Grey's Anatomy

Last fall Sandra Oh did some interviews to promote Rabbit Hole and now we have one that was published on a Polish website in April earlier this year.

In this interview she talks about her role in Rabbit Hole, the difficulty of finding good roles in films and working on Grey's Anatomy after seven years.

As the interview was published in Polish, we've used Google Translate for the translation and tried to  clean it up a bit. The translation is rough, but you'll get the gist.

Sandra Oh, the star of TV series Grey's Anatomy, on the big screen is connected mainly with independent cinema, has created a very interesting supporting character in the film Rabbit Hole, alongside Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart. In an interview just for wp.pl actress talks about her choice of professional engineering work and indignant to undervalue the television production.

Magdalena Lankosz: In the play Rabbit Hole, which served as the basis for the screenplay Rabbit Hole is not as Gabby, that you play. Do you know how she found the film and how she was the lady?

Sandra Oh: Scenario I got mail and I opened it on my BlackBerry just to see how it began. In the middle of the text I found myself still sitting bent over the small screen on my cell and I could not tear myself away. It does not happen often. If you watch a lot of movies, you know well how difficult it is to find a good role these days, especially a good supporting role. I learned that, although the filmmakers involved in the project are in New York, the audition for the film was to be on the West Coast where I live and I knew I had to try everything to get "Rabbit Hole." I made myself with my trial kilak drama teacher, and then forced an actor friend [Kevin McKidd] to go with me to Santa Monica, at 5 PM on Friday.

No! That kind of request qualifies as a crime in Los Angeles!

SO: You live here so you understand that I was desperate, but for all readers who don't know Los Angeles, I must explain that this is one of the worst things that one can ask a man. Traffic on the highway is so busy that it qualifies for the Guinness Book of Records. But I meant it to come off best, and at auditions you often read the dialogue with a completely random person. I did not want a 20-year-old secretary reading the role of 40-year old man. I wanted to present a true actor.

How do you Nicole Kidman, who played a major role in the film?

SO: And produced this film. Extremely impressed with my people, who despite the great fame and big money deals for bending over young, not lucrative projects like this, because I believe that cinema should continue to talk about important things.

How did you prepare for the role of Gabby - a person whose child had died a decade ago, and she still goes to therapy for people in similar situations, still life only the start.

SO: I'm not an actress who would go to such therapies and try to learn the role of the people who actually met such a tragedy. It is for me too aggressive intervention in a very personal experience of others. If the actor does not play a role, where does affection, which allows him to play. What matters is that he feels something. The film's director has gone through a similar tragedy - he lost a brother and it probably helped him more fully immersed in the story told in "Rabbit Hole". I can recall the loss of work or a friend or a beloved dog. As long as I do it convincingly nobody cares what I thought playing.

You specialized in great supporting roles, but not in the limelight. Do you have an appetite for more, can be an accomplished professional actor with a career in the background?

It depends on what kind of person you are. There are those who would give their life to have a starring role, even if they have to deliver the world's dumbest dialogue. I'd rather have a smaller role, with dialogue which I'm proud of, as in the case of the Sideways or Rabbit Hole.

Do you have time to search for these delectable actor roles, working non-stop in Grey's Anatomy?

I still have two years left in my contract and I enjoy the time I spend in the series. Over the past year and a half working on it for me was more rewarding than ever stirred the seven years since I am working on Grey's Anatomy. I believe that the work is as an actor on a  TV series is undervalued.

Let's be honest: not everyone can play on television. Almost every actor will play three days here, a month there, not everyone knows how to work the character for years. For this you need talent and a great deck of spiritual and physical resilience. Television writers scenarios have years to fondle a scenario - they are the brightest people in the film business who can respond within a few hours walking continuously on a minefield in the form of all the bosses and TV producers.

Anyway, I do not think I'm losing so much not being in a movie. Things that interest me: emotionally intense roles, the story of loss, alienation, sadness are becoming increasingly rare in contemporary cinema.

It's surprising what you say. Most of the actors admit that they treat TV more as a state of transition in their careers.

I also had such moments. At a certain stage in the production of Grey's Anatomy the pressure was so great, overwork so it gave me a hard time that I became ill very hard and my had only thought was: "I've got to stop." The second and third season to remember it as hell. I think a lot of people involved in the series felt similarly. What saved us was the writers' strike - we all rested and returned to work as  completely different people.

Interview by Magdalena Lankosz-Michalsk

Source

If there are any Polish-speaking peeps out who'd like to make a correction to the translation, we'd love to hear from you. You can write in the comments or send us an e-mail (see contact details.)