The tvN series Crash Course in Romance is about to end soon and to allow the return of shining Jeon Doyeon. Playing Nam Haengseon, the owner of the Korean side dish store ‘National Team’, she exhibited the same refreshing candor she had in The Harmonium In My Memory, My Mother, The Mermaid, and You Are My Sunshine, while having us recall the grief-stricken face that she had in Secret Sunshine. After her debut as a model for a commercial in 1990, she learned the basics of playing in TV series and quickly forged strong links with the film industry through films like The Contact, A Promise and Happy End. After she made history by becoming the first Korean to win Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, she has remained as busy as ever. She never took a long hiatus, constantly living up to her reputation or challenging it. The melancholy of seeing this series end gives us joy as well, to see her come back on March 31 in the Netflix original movie Kill Bok-soon. We look back on Jeon Doyeon’s career in photos.
In 1997, on the set for The Contact, Jeon Doyeon looked absorbed in her thoughts. Her role, Suhyeon, a woman who has long had a crush on her friend's lover, but the lukewarm reaction of the film industry she had received so far after acting on TV and the pressure of her first film might have played a part. But The Contact eventually became the movie that made her an actor beloved by the industry.
Jeon Doyeon's first Cine21 cover (No. 156) when she was 25 and just started filming her second film A Promise (1998). With her vivid costumes and confidance, you can see how she generated that many positive reviews for her performance.
On the set of Happy End (1999), you would have been hard-pressed to recognize the innocent 17-year-old girl from a mountain village Jeon Doyeon played in The Harmonium In My Memory (1999). The character she played in this movie is Choi Bora, a married woman and mother who has had an affair with her ex-lover Kim Ilbeom (Joo Jin-mo). On that day, she was filming the climax scene where she asks Ilbeom for a break up, with much dedication, discussing how to handle the emotional aspects of each shot with director Jung Jiwoo.
Jeon Doyeon, who appeared on the cover of the issue 284 of Cine 21 wearing an ivory dress, couldn’t stand still during the photoshoot as she kept saying, “It’s embarrassing, I can’t pose.” In an interview, she confessed that the break she endured until filming the melodrama I Wish I Had a Wife (2000) had been painful. “If I don’t work and don’t love, I get depressed. The stress I get from work is something I enjoy, actually. I guess I really enjoy this line of work.”
In February 2002, ahead of the release of No Blood No Tears (2001), Jeon Doyeon visited the Cine 21 office with director Ryoo Seungwan. Since they were both 29 years old, the main concept was to have a talk without formalities. As she became bold enough to call the director by his given name, she confessed that she felt sorry for disappointing him on the set and that she wanted to do better the next time.
In March 2004, Cine 21 accompanied the on-location shooting of My Mother, The Mermaid (2004) in Cebu, Philippines. In the photos taken there Jeon Doyeon clearly looked exhausted. In the film, she played both a woman in her 20s, Nayeon, and her haenyeo (woman diver) mother Yeonsun when she was 20. In Cebu, she would stay in the water until she reached her physical limit to be fully immersed in the parts of the shooting underwater.
She said, “I tend to enjoy physically demanding roles, and I was given scuba training before filming.” She could bear a lot, swallowing a lot of seawater, but she eventually burst in tears when she was stung by a jellyfish.
In April 2005, while filming You Are My Sunshine (2005) on location in Yeongju city, in North Gyeongsang Province, Jeon Doyeon, who played the role of a woman working for a “ticket tea shop” (a form of sex work service provided under the cover of a coffee delivery service) at the Soonjeong Coffee Shop, is filming a scene in which she cuts apples. The recipient of such carefully prepared fruit juice is Seokjoong, a clumsy young man from the countryside, played by actor Hwang Jungmin.
Jeon Doyeon, who won Best Actress at the 60th Cannes Film Festival for her role as Shinae in Secret Sunshine (2007), exuberantly poses in front of reporters from all over the world. In her acceptance speech, she named the two people she was particularly grateful to: “If it wasn't for Director Lee Changdong, I couldn’t have achieved this. And I believe the character of Shin-ae couldn’t have worked so well without Song Kangho, my dear friend Kangho. I will never forget it.”
Jeon Doyeon then became a mother, but above everything else, what kept her awake at night during that period was that she couldn't find any scenario that triggered her interest. For her, The Housemaid (2010) is the title that calmed her impatience. Her role in the film is Eunyi, a maid who is “innocent to a fault, just taking things as they come and reacting.” When she took her first steps back on set, she received “a kind of direction I had never received before”, and she was surprised to find a new interest in acting as she followed Im Sangsoo’s instructions. “I remained light-hearted even though there wasn’t a single scene that wasn’t difficult.”
Ahead of the release of Way Back Home (2013), Jeon Doyeon said, “I still can’t really sort out my feelings living as Jeongyeon.” That's because her character Jeongyeon is a woman who was accused of drug trafficking and imprisoned for two years in Martinique, a remote island that is a French territory. Although it is a person with an undeniably remarkable story, to Jeon’s eyes Jeongyeon is “just an ordinary Korean person”, so she shaped her performance by focusing on the idea of “mundanity”. With director Pang Eunjin, who is also a senior actress, “I thought the shooting would be tricky because we were going to film for about a month in an unfamiliar place, the Dominican Republic, but I grew close to her and our collaboration was hassle-free.”
Jeon Doyeon initially declined to appear in Birthday (2018)
because she just “didn’t dare” to take on the role of a mother who lost her son
in the 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster. When she was offered the scenario again, she
accepted the role and decided to believe in the
sincerity of this project, which “gives comfort those who have to live on.”
Her strict rule was “not to let my
feelings get the better of me.” Otherwise, “I wouldn’t have been able to determine
whether the things I was feeling were Soonnam’s emotional state or the emotions
I could feel while acting. I thought I should stay grounded and not be swept
away by this whirlpool of sorrow.”
We met Jeon Doyeon in March 2020 to commemorate the opening of the CGV Arthouse Jeon Doyeon Hall (December 11, 2019). She said, “I try to accept as much as I can the meanings others attribute to me,” and she remained composed when she celebrated the good news. After the glory of the Cannes Film Festival, she strived to find a way to reduce the burden that comes with such a prestigious accolade, but with her accepting the honor of having a cinema auditorium named after her, she decided to carry that burden comfortably. After such a long filmography, Jeon Doyeon’s only plan is to “not think twice. Since I’ve been taking careful steps until now, I wonder if it isn’t time for me to just do whatever I like. If I remove the ‘actor’ in me, I will be a big empty shell. And that voild couldn’t be filled with anything else. There is nothing that could ever replace it.”
JEON Do-yeon
