‘I WANT TO SEE MYSELFAS THE HERO OF ANY STORY'

BEST KNOWN FOR HER ROLES IN GREY’S ANATOMY AND KILLING EVE SANDRA OH TURNS THIS WEEK AND SHE’S MORE DETERMINED THAN EVER TO SHATTER GLASS CEILINGS AND CHALLENGE THE NORM

- LISA MARKS

There are three roles you probably know Sandra Oh for: Christina Yang in Grey’s Anatomy, feisty Stephanie in the 2004 indie movie Sideways, and Eve Polastri in the hit BBC series Killing Eve. All different, all-powerful, and all characters that any actress would jump at the chance to play.

But when Sandra, who turns 50 this week, looks back at her career, she recognizes that it was her role in Killing Eve that was most hard-won.

After 30 years in the business, the Canadian-born actress acknowledges it was the part she had been waiting for all her life.

Having previously been typecast as a non-white actress, when she was first sent the script, written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, based on the books by Luke Jennings, she flicked through trying to work out which role had been earmarked for her. She had to ask her agent, who told her point-blank that she had been tapped up for the lead. “It took 30 years to get this call,” she said.

It really shouldn’t have been a surprise that she was cast as the boring MI5 operative opposite Jodie Comer, who plays the deliciously evil assassin Villanelle, as her career had been in the ascendant for years.