At 15, Kim Hye-soo first appeared in the movie Ggambo (1986). Now, in her 50s, she’s still enjoying a successful career in Hallyu. What could be the secret to her longevity in an industry that favors the young and the glitzy? Spoiler alert: sheer hard work and the initiative and courage to take on diverse, even unglamorous, roles.
Photo from HanCinema
Birthday: September 5, 1970
Instagram: @hs_kim_95
After appearing in about 30 movies and k-dramas before the turn of the millennium, she transformed her image by portraying strong women in the films Hypnotized (2004), The Red Shoes (2005), and Tazza: The High Rollers (2006). As a result, she played a myriad set of roles in her next projects—a housewife with a college-student lover in A Good Day to Have an Affair (2007), a bar girl/stepmom in My 11th Mother (2007), a mysterious jazz singer in Modern Boy (2008), and a bored widow in Villain and Widow (2010).
Kim Hye-soo starred with other South Korean and Hong Kong A-listers in The Thieves (2012), the 6th highest-grossing Korean movie of all time. Later, she starred in the popular small-screen rom-com The Queen of Office (2013). However, it was her role as a veteran detective in 2016’s Signal which brought her not only commercial, but also critical, success. While she previously won numerous Best Actress awards for her role in Tazza, this was her first time to win such an award for TV at the 52nd Baeksang Arts Awards.
She headlined as a cold-blooded crime boss in Coin Locker Girl (2015), where makeup artists aged and uglified her. She didn’t mind. Once again, she won various Best Actress awards, including the 35th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards and the 21st Chunsa Film Art Awards.
After playing a lawyer in Hyena (2020), Kim Hye-soo starred as a judge in the Netflix Originals production Juvenile Justice.
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