UM Aeng-ran was one of Korea’s best-known actresses of the 1960s, mostly remembered for her typical image of a college student from an upper class family. Born in 1936 to a saxophonist father and a stage actress mother (NO Jae-shin), she already had a foot in the door of the entertainment industry long before she took an interest in acting. She debuted her career when director JEON Chang-keun, a friend of her mother, was desperately looking for a child actor to play the ro...
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UM Aeng-ran was one of Korea’s best-known actresses of the 1960s, mostly remembered for her typical image of a college student from an upper class family. Born in 1936 to a saxophonist father and a stage actress mother (NO Jae-shin), she already had a foot in the door of the entertainment industry long before she took an interest in acting. She debuted her career when director JEON Chang-keun, a friend of her mother, was desperately looking for a child actor to play the role of a young queen in his upcoming film <The Tragedy Of King Dan Jong> (1956). On the recommendation of his wife and actress YU Gye-seon, JEON decided instead to cast UM despite her age – she was 19 at the time. Introduced on promotional material for <The Tragedy Of King Dan Jong> as “NO Jae-shin’s daughter”, UM benefited a lot from her mother’s fame in her early career. Besides, her mother has long acted as her agent, making use of her many contacts in the industry. With her young age and her elegant look reminiscent of Audrey HEPBURN, she represented the quintessential “modern woman”. After landing a support part in <The Housemaid> (1960), KIM Ki-young’s most celebrated work, she quickly became a fixture in family dramas, one of the biggest trends around the turn of the decade, playing model daughters and students in works such as <A Romantic Papa> (1960), <Mr. Park> (1961), <A Coachman> (1961) and <Kim’s Daughters> (1963). She skyrocketed to stardom in 1963 by starring alongside SHIN Seong-il in two of the earliest examples of the Korean youth film genre, <Private Tutor> (1963) from KIM Ki-young and KIM Soo-young’s <The Classroom of Youth> (1963). Having instantly become one of the most iconic on-screen couples of the generation, both actors would remain closely associated with the genre for years to come, with UM appearing in more than 30 such films by the mid-1960s when the trend started to die out. Particularly popular among college students, many young people would go watch every movie in which she would star, to the point where the medias bestowed her the title of “undergraduate actress number one”. UM reached the peak of her popularity with the smash hit <The Barefooted Young> (1964), in which she portrayed a sophisticated daughter of a diplomat falling in love with a young thug, once again played by SHIN, and trying to overcome social barriers. The film resonated particularly with the younger generations and remains to this day the most representative works of that period. UM’s marriage to her co-star SHIN in late 1964 was naturally one of the biggest stories in Korean entertainment that year, but it also marked the beginning of the decline for UM’s career. As she had trouble staying relevant in an industry that was moving toward action films, roles became fewer and farther between, until she made one last appearance in 1976, in <A Pair> (1976). She came back in the 1990s as guest and regular host of several talk shows on television and radio, while helping her husband run his film production company Seong-Il Cinemart.
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