Lee Jungeun is an actress who has become famous worldwide for some scene-stealing performances. Born in 1970, she was hit with a sudden realization after the death of student activist Lee Hanyeol in 1987 and one of her classmates was expelled from school just for asking other students to wear a black ribbon in solidarity. Profoundly affected, Lee decided that she would rather live doing what she loves than try to fit the mould, and so she applied to the drama school of Hanyan...More

Lee Jungeun is an actress who has become famous worldwide for some scene-stealing performances. Born in 1970, she was hit with a sudden realization after the death of student activist Lee Hanyeol in 1987 and one of her classmates was expelled from school just for asking other students to wear a black ribbon in solidarity. Profoundly affected, Lee decided that she would rather live doing what she loves than try to fit the mould, and so she applied to the drama school of Hanyang University. She made her stage debut in 1991 in a production of <A Midsummer Night’s Dream>, just before her graduation in 1992. She was very active on stage throughout the 1990s and the following decade, whereas her few experiences playing bit parts in films, in <A Masterpiece in My Life> (2000) and <Wanee And Junah> (2001), left a sour taste in her mouth.
In 2008, she joined the cast of the hit Korean musical <Laundry>, with which she would perform until the next year and again between 2012 and 2017. The head of <Laundry> production company, Choi Seyeon, also happened to work as a costume designer on Bong Joonho’s <Mother> (2009) and had naturally invited the famed director to one of the performances. Impressed by Lee’s talent, he wanted to include her in his film one way or another, and so she ended up playing a small role in the critically acclaimed <Mother>, therefore launching her film career. She was later seen in popular films such as <The Attorney> (2013) and <A Violent Prosecutor> (2015) as well as in festival favorites like <A Girl at My Door> (2014) and <THE WAILING> (2016), with more substantial roles in <A Taxi Driver> (2017), <Miss Baek> (2017) and <Another Child> (2018). In 2016, she won Best Acting at the Seoul Theatre Festival for her performance in <Feast>, produced with Hanyang Repertory Theater.
Bong continued to work with her. He cast her in his Netflix film in <Okja>, as the voice of the titular “super pig”, and, more importantly, he knew he could entrust her with a key role in <PARASITE> (2019). Not only did her character turned out to be crucial in switching the tone of the movie in the latter half, but she also managed to pull off a performance unanimously praised by the audiences and critics alike as a literal scene stealer. It thus came as no surprise that she dominated the awards season in Korea, taking home four Best Supporting Actress trophies, including those from the Grand Bell Awards and the Blue Dragon Film Awards, on top of a Baeksang Art Award for her role in the drama series <Dazzling>. What's more, she and her co-stars made history as the first actors of a non-English language film to win Best Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in the US. <PARASITE> wasn’t her only claim to fame that year, as she was also lauded for her turn as an enigmatic landowner in the horror drama series <Strangers from Hell> (2019) as well as her appearance in the romcom series <When the Camellia Blooms> (2019).
In Lee Joonik’s <The Book of Fish> (2019), she once again played a supporting role that proved more important than it first appeared, and she could be seen also in the drama <THE DAY I DIED : UNCLOSED CASE> (2020). She finally received her first top billing in Shin Suwon’s <Hommage> (2021), playing a film director conducting research on one of Korea’s earliest women filmmakers.
Less