Born in 1981 in Köln, Germany, Yoo Teo wanted to make a living of his first passion, basketball. Every vacation, he would go to a camp training in a Korean university and was even scouted by a professional team. However, after tearing the cruciate ligaments of one of his knees in 1998 and those of his other knee in 1999, his doctor told him he could have lost the ability to walk. That was enough to convince him to give up his sports career altogether. After he took an intere...More

Born in 1981 in Köln, Germany, Yoo Teo wanted to make a living of his first passion, basketball. Every vacation, he would go to a camp training in a Korean university and was even scouted by a professional team. However, after tearing the cruciate ligaments of one of his knees in 1998 and those of his other knee in 1999, his doctor told him he could have lost the ability to walk. That was enough to convince him to give up his sports career altogether. After he took an interest in acting, he joined his school’s drama club and started to consider going to a film school. One year before the end of high school, Yoo convinced his parents to let him study in New York for a year as an exchange student. His reasoning was that since he was about to enter a specialized school to become a physical therapist, this was the opportune time to try what he probably wouldn’t have the time nor the occasion to do again later. He took an acting class at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, and after two years and a half, unable to renew his visa and having discovered Shakespeare’s repertoire, he applied and was eventually accepted into the intensive courses of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. As his parents were still expecting him to major in physical therapy, he went back to New York to pretend he was studying oriental medicine while he was in fact auditioning for various roles in theater and films. After he received bit roles that were for the most part stereotypical, like a delivery man of a Chinese restaurant or a laundromat clerk, he moved to Korea in 2009 to try his chance in the local industry. Before long, he was offered a minor role in E J-young’s experimental <The Actresses> (2009). His background as the child to Koreans immigrants in Germany helped him land his first main role in Benson Lee’s <Seoul Searching> (2015), since the title is about overseas Koreans meeting at a camp in Seoul. After a short appearance in the American film <Equals> (2015), Yoo explored other opportunities in Asian markets with supporting roles in the Vietnamese action film <Bitcoin Heist> (2016), the Thai melodrama <The Moment> (2017) and the China-Indonesia co-production <Island Dream> (2017). In 2018, he passed an audition for the role of Russian rock legend Viktor Tsoy (who was also of Korean descent) in Kirill Serebrennikov’s <Leto> (2018), beating more than 2000 candidates. It was only after he arrived in Moscow for the shoot that he was told he would have to deliver most of his lines in Russian, and even sing some of Tsoy’s iconic songs, even though he had no previous knowledge of that language. Nevertheless, he managed to learn Russian pronunciation and memorize his lines phonetically during the 17 days that preceded the start of the shooting, and his performance was eventually met with rave reviews following the screening of the film in Cannes as part of the official competition. He was introduced to a wider Korean audience in 2019 when he joined the cast of television fantasy series <Arthdal Chronicles> (2019), in which he made a strong impression. In 2020, he gained further recognition with supporting roles in TV series, playing a Korean American branch manager in the finance thriller series <Money Game> and an English teacher in the fantasy series <The School Nurse Files> (2020). In early 2020, he was filming in Antwerp, Belgium, for the A24 produced <Past Lives> when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. Stranded in his hotel after Belgium went into lockdown, while the rest of the actors and film crew managed to return home, Yoo was confronted with the fear of dying alone in a foreign country and started documenting his days with his smartphone. After he was able to come back to Korea, he edited the footage and released this documentary/vlog as <Log in Belgium>, therefore making his debut as a director.Less