PARK Hae-il, born in 1977, started acting on stage in his childhood. Having won Best New Actor in the theatre category of the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2000 for his role as the lead in the Korean play <Ode to Youth>, filmmakers took notice of him and were drawn by his somewhat boyish appearance that was at odd with the great maturity in his acting. Following a supporting role in the inspirational indie favorite <Waikiki Brothers> (2001) from YIM Soon-rye, he took on...More

PARK Hae-il, born in 1977, started acting on stage in his childhood. Having won Best New Actor in the theatre category of the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2000 for his role as the lead in the Korean play <Ode to Youth>, filmmakers took notice of him and were drawn by his somewhat boyish appearance that was at odd with the great maturity in his acting. Following a supporting role in the inspirational indie favorite <Waikiki Brothers> (2001) from YIM Soon-rye, he took on the lead role in another well-known indie drama, <Jealousy Is My Middle Name> (2002). His filmography took a turn for the darker when he was cast against type in the role of an unsettling innocent-looking suspect of a series of gruesome murders in BONG Joon-ho’s universally acclaimed <Memories of Murder> (2003). BONG would say of his performance as an ambiguous character in that film that it made him look like “a soap-smelling pervert”. PARK then played an unscrupulous womanizer teacher who never stops asking his new colleague for a night with her in <Rules of Dating> (2005), a far cry from the ideal image of a romantic and bright man he had in <My Mother, The Mermaid> (2004) that had won him many fans. From then on, he would steer away from romantic fare to expand his acting repertoire. PARK reunited with director BONG for another of his most famous titles, <The Host> (2006). After the thriller film <Paradise Murdered> (2007), PARK worked again with director KIM Han-min for <War of the Arrows>, which became the biggest box-office draw of 2011 with over 7 million audiences. PARK’s performance was particularly praised and earned him awards from the Blue Dragon Film Awards and the Grand Bell Awards, preceded by another accolade at the Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival. He stretched his acting scope further still as he took on the role of an elderly poet in the acclaimed 2012 feature <Eungyo>, for which he was grimed to look 40 years older. The SONG Hae-sung family drama <Boomerang Family> followed in 2013 before he returned to romantic fare, his first since 2005, in the ZHANG Lu film <Gyeongju> (2014). Two more high profile roles followed later that year with LEE Hae-jun’s second solo direction effort <My Dictator>, in which he played SUL Kyung-gu’s son, and YIM Soon-rye’s <The Whistleblower>, where he played a journalist becoming the target of a mobbing campaign and political pressure after he reveals a high-profile case of stem cell research fraud. Slowing for a moment, PARK only appeared in ZHANG Lu’s anthology <Love and…> before returning in 2016 to the commercial fold, with an appearance in HUR Jin-ho’s Colonial Era romantic drama <The Last Princess> (2016). With the historical war drama <The Fortress>, PARK went back to the exact same period depicted in <War in Arrows>, but this time to portray the notorious ruler of that time, King Injo of Joseon, as he was corned by the Qing army in the mountains and forced to surrender. After another critically acclaimed collaboration with ZHANG in <Ode to the Goose> (2018), PARK played the monk who largely contributed to the creation of the Korean alphabet in the period piece drama <The King’s Letters> (2019), starring alongside SONG Kang-ho as King Sejong the Great.Less