In 1974 he starred in the Academy Award-nominated film The Deluge under Jerzy Hoffman.

[3] O'Ya studied piano with the Estonian composer Eugen Kapp.

He was part of a pop music group in Tartu in 1951 and the Riga Teacher's House dance orchestra from 1956–1964.

From the late the 1960s, he mainly lived and worked in Wrocław, Poland, but did not renounce his Soviet citizenship, as that was how he was able to visit Estonia.

On the initiative of Foreign Minister Trivim Velliste, O'Ya became the cultural attaché and honorary consul of the Republic of Estonia in Poland.