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“It’s more like a wake-up that, ‘Hey, you’re in the middle of your career,’” Oh said. “I still feel, remarkably, like I’m in the beginning of my career. I never went to university, and I still feel that whenever I step onto a university campus, ‘Oh, one day I’ll go to university.’

“There’s still very much a forward movement that I have in my internal clock. So when one is honoured with something like the Governor General’s Performing Arts award, it kinda jolts you out of the beginner’s mind, and that it’s OK. You’ve been beginning for 30 years so you have to actually take a look at what’s gotten you to this point.”

Photo by MARK RALSTON / AFP/Getty Images

Living in California, too, means that time passes in a different way than life in Canada, she noted, where things change with the seasons.

“It’s very difficult to keep track of time because (it seems) everything was last summer, and you don’t have seasons to remind you of time,” Oh said. “So I’ve always kind of equated time with gigs.”

Photo by Julie Oliver / Postmedia

This year is already shaping up to be memorable for Oh, who made history when she became the first Asian woman to host (with Andy Samberg) the 76th annual Golden Globe Awards in January, earning that night’s award for best actress in a television series for her role in Killing Eve, the hit BBC America series. Her Saturday Night Live hosting gig was only the third time it went to a woman of Asian background.

“Definitely I’m in a new chapter of my life, beginning with Killing Eve, which started two years ago,” she said. “This particular year has been extraordinary so far. Life does change and this will be a very remarkable year for me because there are so many external events that I can point to that are on camera. They’ve all been recorded, and I can look back and go, ‘This is a significant year.’”