My, Oh, my! Emmy nomination's a surprise for actress

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There was a time when Sandra Oh wasn't sure where her next paycheck would be coming from.

That was then.

These days she's taking life more in stride while working on ABC's hit show "Grey's Anatomy" - and enjoying her first Best Supporting Actress Emmy nomination.

Oh's work as the driven, emotionally distant Cristina Yang has already netted her a Golden Globe - and this Sunday she will go up against "Anatomy" castmate Chandra Wilson as well as Jean Smart ("24"), Candice Bergen ("Boston Legal") and Blythe Danner ("Huff") for an Emmy.

And while Oh is "thrilled" to be nominated - the show itself earned 11 - she wasn't exactly expecting it. "I had no idea the Emmy nominations were coming up," she said.

In fact, the morning the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences made its announcement she was asleep in her bed, having recently returned home after a two-month, eight-show-a-week run at New York's Public Theater in playwright Diana Son's "Satellites."

"It was like my first day of sleeping after the play. I slept in until 11:30. It was fabulous," she said. "Then I looked on my cell and there were, like, nine messages and I was wondering what was going on."

The ride, said Oh during a recent interview on the "Grey's" set, "has been great. It has been at times overwhelming. Television is a completely different medium from film. Your visibility is not only higher, it's constant. That has been a very, very new thing in my life. But I really enjoy working on the show, and I really enjoy working consistently."

Before "Grey's" Oh consistently earned plaudits for her work in quirky projects like HBO's "Arli$$," a critical favorite that never achieved a broad audience, and the film "Sideways."

When "Grey's Anatomy" premiered as a midseason series a year and a half ago the cast had no idea what to expect.

"We barely had an airdate," Oh recalled. "We didn't know how the show was going to go in the very beginning and you think, `Oh my God, am I going to have to do pilot season again?'"

How things have changed.

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