CHOI Hee-seo, born in 1987 in Seoul, spent her childhood in Osaka, Japan. She got there her first taste of acting while playing the title role in a performance of the Korean play <The Tale of Shim Cheong>. After going to middle and high school in the US, she came back to Korea and studied mass communication and Italian language at Yonsei University, while also taking part in the drama club of the school. In 2008, she attended the University of California, Berkeley, on a...More

CHOI Hee-seo, born in 1987 in Seoul, spent her childhood in Osaka, Japan. She got there her first taste of acting while playing the title role in a performance of the Korean play <The Tale of Shim Cheong>. After going to middle and high school in the US, she came back to Korea and studied mass communication and Italian language at Yonsei University, while also taking part in the drama club of the school. In 2008, she attended the University of California, Berkeley, on an exchange scholarship in performing arts. Sports comedy <Lifting Kingkong> (2009) marked the debut of her film career, with a minor role as one of the aspiring athletes trained by LEE Beom-su. She would appear in a lot of short films. CHOI was cast for independent features <It’s Time to Love> (2013) and <Love Never Fails> (2014) as well as a few TV series. She even tried her hands at film directing with a few shorts, and went through the trouble of staging her own play, hiring actors and renting a theater with her money. After producer SHIN Yeon-shik spotted CHOI by chance, he recommended her to director LEE Joon-ik for the role of a Japanese woman in their upcoming film <DONGJU; The Portrait of A Poet> (2016). In this biopic dealing with the moral dilemmas brought on by the Japanese occupation of Korea, she made such an impression with her acting skills, and what’s more in Japanese, that LEE naturally called her back to play Japanese anarchist Fumiko KANEKO in his topical follow-up <Anarchist from the colony> (2017). Even though the film was originally intended to be about Korean independence activist PARK Yeol (the Korean title is named after him), CHOI gave such a riveting performance and swept the newcomer awards at local ceremonies that year. She established thereby a new record with 11 acting accolades in a single awards season, while also achieving the unprecedented feat of winning both Best New Actress and Best Actress at the Grand Bell Awards. BONG Joon-ho, who had also taken notice of her performance in <DONGJU>, called upon her for the minor role of an interpreter in <Okja> (2017). In 2018, she starred in the TV series <Mistress> based on the British series of the same name and took the lead role of HAN Ka-ram debut feature <Our Body>.Less