Born in 1972, LEE Jun-hyeok got into the habit of watching all the movies in theater since he was young and decided early on that he would be a film director. After the film company where he was doing an office job went bankrupt, a producer advised him that in order to realize his dream he should better start by working in theatre, and so he joined in 1996 the experimental theater troupe Baeksukwangbu Company. What he didn’t see coming was that he would discover there a ne...
More
Born in 1972, LEE Jun-hyeok got into the habit of watching all the movies in theater since he was young and decided early on that he would be a film director. After the film company where he was doing an office job went bankrupt, a producer advised him that in order to realize his dream he should better start by working in theatre, and so he joined in 1996 the experimental theater troupe Baeksukwangbu Company. What he didn’t see coming was that he would discover there a new passion for acting, and so he decided to pursue this career path instead. It wasn’t easy for him to make a living from it, sometimes making as little as KRW 1000 (USD 1.4) for a stage performance. Although he first appeared in a film in 1991 as a supporting character in <Mother, Your Son>, he was mostly absent from the big screen until the early 2000s, when he received a few bit parts. What helped him break through was the miming skills he learned from his model actor and professional mime artist NAM Geung-ho (LEE even followed him on his year-long tour in France in 2006). Indeed, it wasn’t until when LEE taught miming to LEE Jung-jae and LEE Young-ae for the needs of their roles in <Last Present> (2001) that he began to be recognized within the film industry. A few years later, he landed a supporting role in the last-minute surprise hit of 2008, <Scandal Makers>. Following that, he quickly became a fixture of Korean films, appearing in a lot of supporting roles for films and series while also being regularly invited to TV shows. Although his name is still not widely recognized in Korea, almost everyone in Korea knows his face from one of the numerous supporting roles he played in the last decade, his deadpan humor rarely if ever going unnoticed. However, there is also a few titles of his filmography in which he never even shows his face. Having performed motion capture for the titular gorilla of sports blockbuster <Mr. Go>, the first Korean film to ever use that technology, LEE has been nicknamed the “Korean Andy Serkis” by some media outlets. He has since often been called upon to serve as a motion-capture consultant for other productions such as <A Werewolf Boy>, for which he helped SONG Joong-ki nail the postures, gestures and expressions of a wolf. JEON Kyu-hwan’s <Animal Town> marked the first time LEE was cast in a lead role on the big screen.
Less
