Born in 1968, Lee Sungmin started his career in theatre at the age of 19, while he was preparing for the college entrance exam, when one day he saw a poster for a small company in Yeongju that was looking for new members. After he was noticed by a stage director from Daegu, he moved there and spent the next decade contributing to the cultural scene of the region. He won Best New Actor at the Daegu Theater Festiv al in 1992, which was followed by a Best Actor Award six years l...More

Born in 1968, Lee Sungmin started his career in theatre at the age of 19, while he was preparing for the college entrance exam, when one day he saw a poster for a small company in Yeongju that was looking for new members. After he was noticed by a stage director from Daegu, he moved there and spent the next decade contributing to the cultural scene of the region. He won Best New Actor at the Daegu Theater Festiv al in 1992, which was followed by a Best Actor Award six years later at the same ceremony, and in 2001, he picked up Best Acting at the Korean Theater Festival for his performance in <Pig Hunting>, which he also co-directed. In 2002, he moved to Seoul and joined the Chaimu company. After a first silver screen appearance in the short <Black&White> in 2001, he made his debut along with other actors from Chaimu in the Korean Division indie drama <Silk Shoes> in 2005. His role in <Secret Sunshine> by director Lee Changdong gave him recognition as well as meatier roles for television. Following the indie film <Cafe Noir> (2009), Lee gained wider recognition playing the antagonistic manager he in the restaurant-set romcom series <Pasta> (2010). After that, Lee has been constantly in demand, mostly in commercial fare. He has played detectives in <Officer of the Year> (2010), <Howling> (2010) and <Broken> (2014), a doctor in <My Brilliant Life> (2014), a chief prosecutor in <The Unjust> (2010), a reporter in <The Attorney> (2013) and the head of a band of thieves in <Kundo: Age of the Rampant> (2014). Meanwhile, his casting in medical drama series <Brain> (2011-2012) and <Golden Time> (2012) brought him to wider notice. His breakthrough role eventually came in 2014 when he starred as a workaholic, moody manager who slowly warms up to his unqualified new intern in the workplace drama series <Misaeng: Incomplete Life> (2014), a social phenomenon that would allow him to pick up Best Actor in Television at the Baeksang Arts Awards. Lee next appeared alongside Ryu Seungryong in the rural mystery <The Piper> in 2015. Keeping a foot in both the supporting and leading actor realms, Lee was the star for the first time in his career in the sci-fi drama <Sori: Voice from the Heart> and a co-star in prison thriller <A Violent Prosecutor>, both of which were released during Lunar New Year in early 2016. Later that year, Lee took top billing again but this time flexing his comedy skills in <The Sheriff In Town> (2016), which scored 2.6 million admissions. 2018 saw him star in a large variety of roles, as he played a cheating husband in the adult comedy <What a Man Wants> (2017), the witness to a murder who runs for his life in <The Witness> (2017), and a high-ranking North Korean official in the spy thriller <The Spy Gone North> (2017). To cap this impressive year, Lee received several awards for his standout performance in <The Spy Gone North>, including the Grand Bell Award and the Korean Association of Film Critics Award for Best Actor. In 2019, Lee left no one indifferent with his impression of Korea’s former autocratic President Park Chunghee in the historical drama <The Man Standing Next>. In 2021, he could be seen in the feel-good drama <The Miracle> (2021), in which he plays an endearing engineer whose dearest wish is to see a train station in his village. After a cameo in Lee Jungjae’s directing debut <HUNT>, he starred in <REMEMBER> (2020) as a man suffering from Alzheimer’s who decides to track down and punish those who massacred his family during the Japanese Occupation. 2022 was also a good year for him on television, as he starred in the Netflix original series <Juvenile Justice> and fronted the Disney+ series <Shadow Detective>.Less