One common road to travel on the way to being a Korean actress is by the idol route. Oh Yeon-seo was only 15 when she debuted in the girl group Luv. Common doesn’t necessarily mean easy, however. The band disbanded six months later and Oh decided to try her hand at acting.
Photo from STORY J COMPANY/HanCinema
Birthday: June 22, 1987
Instagram: @ohvely22
It was a difficult road as she’d never had acting lessons. Undaunted, she worked her way up to a lead role by taking on roles in every genre and majoring in theatre and film at Dongguk University. She first appeared in a 2003 drama Sharp and in a 2009 film A Blood Pledge.
But it took almost a decade before she finally gained recognition in the family drama My Husband Got a Family (2012). In the same year she finally got her first lead role in Here Comes Mr. Oh.
Since then, she has starred in several dramas including Jang Bo-ri Is Here! (2014), Shine or Go Crazy (2015), Come Back Mister (2016), My Sassy Girl (2017), A Korean Odyssey (2017–18), Love with Flaws (2019–20), and Mad for Each Other (2021).
Actors in other countries change their name for better recall, but in Korea, names are often changed for a better future. Oh Yeon-seo is probably grateful for the new name that was picked for her after her girl group disbanded. But while her new name might have come from a shaman, her tenacity and grit to make it in Korean show business could only have come from within.
After her 2022 k-drama Cafe Minamdang with Seo In-guk, she is back with Song Seung-heon in the ongoing series The Player 2: Master of Swindlers.
Comments