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This past summer, the award-winning actor took the stage behind a lectern at a commencement event in New Hampshire. She was there to deliver university-leavers words of hope during a time of permacrisis. Rising to the task, she shared personally about her own previous struggles with mental health challenges and worry, then made a heartfelt case for welcoming discomfort and empathy. “Enabling us to meet hardship again and again and not lose our decency,” she stated. This was vitally necessary, she noted, when many world leaders “gain influence through intimidation and suppression.”

Then came the point that would go viral. The actress encouraged everyone to rise and do something the Grey’s Anatomy role used to do when times got tough. “Move through it!” she exhorted as an energetic melody washed over the audience. “Cherish this experience!”

“I was very, very, very nervous about it,” Oh admits. “I worked really hard.” She had been imagining herself into the mindset of recent graduates not just anxious about their own prospects but about the broader world. “The world is burning!” she says, envisioning their anxious worries. “Violence is rampant! The emotional burden results in constant negative consumption.”

Yet, essentially, her intention was her audience to find their way to positivity – thus the dancing. “Enduring suffering consciously,” she says, succinctly expressing the philosophy she shared that day, “will help you figure out how to exist meaningfully.”

You can find apparel displaying the phrase she expressed at a major awards show: ‘I’m proud of my heritage’

That speech – with its honesty and compassion, its consciousness of the world’s cruelties while still finding moments of joy – feels particularly on-brand for Oh. Born near a Canadian city to Korean immigrant parents, the actor, whose iconic performances in popular shows made her the pioneering performer to win several major awards, has since earned admiration for her strong advocacy of greater inclusion in the industry.

Engaging and lively, her discussion is filled with plenty of laughs. “Hold on baby!” is the initial remark heard as she chats by phone from the bustling city, buying a moment as she attempts unsuccessfully to activate her camera. But Oh soon becomes more introspective, prone to lengthy silences as she talks about everything from the environmental crisis to artificial intelligence to social justice.

Appropriately, her newest film – an indie Canadian sci-fi film – is about seeking hope amid the burning. After an apocalyptic, technology-driven disaster hits Earth in the intentionally picked year of the near future, human life has been rebuilt. It’s 2040: peace has been established. Corporate spaces, computers and mobile phones are relics of a damned civilisation. People spend their days tending to their gardens. But there are conditions: they avoid journeys, energy is controlled and – the biggest catch – everyone must accept a scheduled end at midlife. The actress embodies someone who lived through the founding event, who is assisting her daughter into her new job as a “recorder” of these “conclusion” ceremonies.

If your main emotional connection is the phone, an effect is taking place to you at an unconscious level

“What captivated me was the script’s meditation on death,” says Oh, in particular how the knowledge of one’s approaching end would change one’s outlook to life. It’s an ever more pressing question, she notes, thinking back on an first viewing last year while wildfires burned across a urban area. It brought home the idea that the film is not really about the future. “This is current reality,” she says. “Our world is already aflame.”

While filming the project, Oh asked the creative lead to include artificial intelligence in the script. How does she think digital tools is changing our lives? “Screens and networks,” she says, “are retraining human beings. If devices become your emotional core, an impact is felt to you at an unconscious level.”

The way she copes to this change – “I’m already struggling, and I didn’t grow up with this technology” – is choosing to do “intimate, deeply significant” works such as this latest one, as well as stage acting. She has been performing a renowned character in an open-air theatre in a famous urban park. “I’m engaging with 2,000 people in an outdoor venue. You can feel people really want to come to the show to have fun, have a good time, for it to be joyous, out in nature. You’re in community and you’re sharing – through timeless narratives.” In the age of the technology, “such true human interactions become increasingly essential.”

Oh talks a lot about making conscious choices, thoughtful moves. “This is the gift of midlife,” says the actor, who has recently celebrated her mid-fifties. “Many elements in culture, that you’ve been experiencing passively. But you see that glimmer of hope coming through – and realise that’s what you want to embrace. I think that’s what this stage is about. And it’s very fulfilling.”

She has discussed moving past the prejudice she internalised from her formative time, highlighting a painful memory with an professional when she arrived in an entertainment hub in the past decade. The figure suggested her to leave as there was no work for Asian actors there. Years after, on receiving a career-changing role, she was unsure which secondary character was intended for her. “Honey,” her manager said. “It’s the main character.”

More recently, the actress has focused her significant influence into projects from the Asian diaspora, acting in family features, thriller stories, and lighthearted stories. She’s also played distinct parts in historical drama and campus-based shows. Such parts, unlike the ones that made her famous, specifically consider her character’s roots in the script.

“I remember being a industry celebration when a landmark film received top honors,” she says. “It meant a great deal. To create change, you need a larger community – to get traction, to learn and grow, to know how to work together. When I started, actors like me – we’d crossed paths for ever, but we rarely collaborated on a production, because we were always separate. It’s still a competitive environment, leaning into, honestly, a {patriarchal white mainstream|traditional power structure|established