For anyone who became a fan of Korean cinema in the early 2000's, the first image to spring to mind of Gianna Jun is probably the same - that of her vomiting over an unsuspecting passenger's toupée while riding on a late night train, the memorable part of course is that the toupée was on his head when she did. The scene is from the 2001 movie My Sassy Girl (2001), which not only became a hit in Korea, but became a sensation throughout the whole of Asia, particularly in China. The movie itself spawned an official Hong Kong movie sequel, as well as being re-made in Hollywood.

My Sassy Girl (2001)

My Sassy Girl well and truly marked the arrival of Gianna Jun as an icon of the Korean wave, a far cry from her original dream of being a flight attendant. Discovered at 16 on the street by a fashion editor, after a name change from Wang to Jeon, in 1997 she began a successful modelling career. While she landed a role in the 1999 movie White Valentine (1999), it was actually a Samsung commercial for a printer of all things which brought her to the public's attention. The two minute ad pretty much consists of Gianna dancing and little else, however it was enough to sear Gianna Jun into the public consciousness.

Between White Valentine and My Sassy Girl she landed a role in the movie Il Mare (2001) opposite Lee Jeong-jae. A romantic melodrama with the added element of time travel thrown in, the plot concerns two characters living in the same house by the lake, but during different periods of time, who find they can write to each other through the mail. The time travel twist is subtle and only used as a device for the characters to communicate, giving a fresh spin on the usual story of two people who are meant to be together but can't. Il Mare was a critical success, going so far as also getting the Hollywood remake treatment in 2006 as The Lake House, with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.

Il Mare (2001)

After the success of My Sassy Girl, Gianna Jun took a two year break from movies, during which she appeared in countless TV commercials and on billboards across Asia, before returning in 2003 to try her hand at horror with The Uninvited (2003). While the movie was a critical success, it didn't resonate with audiences and was a failure at the box office. Confusingly, another Korean horror movie, Kim Ji-woon's A Tale of Two Sisters, was subjected to a Hollywood remake, which was also called The Uninvited, released in 2009 and bearing no relation to the Gianna Jun movie.

Perhaps wanting to return to more familiar territory, in 2004 she re-teamed with My Sassy Girl director Kwak Jae-yong to make the romantic melodrama Windstruck (2004), in which she plays a policewoman who falls for a school teacher. However because of the all too familiar feel to that of My Sassy Girl, the movie was met with only a lukewarm reception, and it was generally acknowledged that Gianna Jun's popularity was on a downward turn. On a positive note, while My Sassy Girl wasn't particularly big in Japan, Windstruck proved to be quite the opposite, and at the time became the best-performing Korean movie there of all time.

Gianna Jun left the movie scene again for a couple of years, although as before her presence was still visible through the many advertisements she appeared in, before re-emerging in 2006 for the action drama Daisy (2006). The movie was notable for being shot in the Netherlands, and being directed by Andrew Lau, the Hong Kong director behind Infernal Affairs. Despite not reaping box office success she followed up Daisy in 2008 with A Man Who Was Superman (2008), starring alongside Hwang Jeong-min. A quirky tale that sees her play a documentary producer following a man who claims to be Superman, but has just lost his powers due to a piece of kryptonite being stuck in his brain, it proved to be an entertaining return to form. Despite the unique premise though, it was actually Gianna chopping off her signature long hair which got the most attention.

2009 was a big year for Gianna Jun as she took the plunge that so many Asian stars do and went to try her hand at Hollywood, landing the lead role in the live action version of the Japanese animation Blood: The Last Vampire. Performing under her international screen name Gianna Jun, she spent three gruelling months training in martial arts and stunt work, not to mention learning a script in English. While her efforts in the movie are clear to see, she handles the action scenes with aplomb and delivers her lines convincingly, the movie is missing that special something, and in a market that was already saturated with vampire tales, it didn't have enough to hold its head above water for long.

For a while it seems like Gianna Jun was going to be quiet during the 2010's, but thankfully in 2012 all that changed, when she returned to the big screen with a bang in Choi Dong-hoon's adventure romp The Thieves (2012). A stand out in the movies all-star Pan-Asian cast (which included her Il Mare co-star Lee Jeong-jae), playing the cat burglar of the group Gianna was back on form as a more mature but still just as sassy as ever incarnation of her previous roles.

The Thieves (2012)

Much like the path she followed in the 2000's, in 2013 she'd follow up her quirky role in The Thieves with a much more serious one in Ryoo Seung-wan's The Berlin File (2013), a murky espionage thriller in which she starred alongside Ha Jung-woo and Ryoo Seung-bum. The role showcased her ability to handle physically and emotionally demanding roles, overlapping with her massive television success in My Love from the Star, which further elevated her global profile once again thanks to it successfully being exported to several overseas markets.

Her next major film would see her re-team with Choi Dong-hoon for 2015's Assassination (2015), marking a defining moment in her later career. Cast as a sniper in the 1930s resistance-era action drama, she delivered one of her most acclaimed performances, and the film became the highest-grossing Korean film of 2015, cementing her status as a box-office powerhouse.

Assassination (2015)

After 2015 though Gianna Jun shifted her focus toward television projects such as Legend of the Blue Sea, most notably appearing as the title character in 2021's Kingdom: Ashin of the North, a feature length spin-off from the period zombie series Kingdom which starred Bae Doona. While we still await a third season that looked primed to feature Gianna Jun as the villain of the piece for the first time, it was enough to prove her appeal had yet to diminish even in the 2020's.

Her cinematic return is slated for 2026 with the upcoming zombie thriller Colony, marking her first film in over a decade, as she teams up with Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho for a tale that promises to be a cinematic comeback that's well worth the wait.

Written by Paul Bramhall
Edited by kofic