- KO-pick
- YOUN Yuh-jung, Actress of Instincts
- by JEONG Han-seok / May 30, 2016
- YOUN Yuh-jung was once famous for choosing love at the expense of her acting career. Born in 1947, her first heyday came in the early 1970s, when she was in her early 20s. She made her acting debut in TV dramas in the late 60s where she attracted a lot of attention, and soon moved onto the screen, becoming the heroine of the most popular movies of that time. Among the films where she took the lead were Woman Of Fire (1971) and Insect Woman (1972). However, in 1975, when she was on the top of her career, she suddenly left the screen.
She fell in love with a man, and moved to America after they got married. The man she married was JO Young-nam, a popular singer representing Korean folk rock at that time. She spent 10 years as a wife and mother, leaving her acting career behind. However when they divorced in 1985, she resumed her acting career from the very bottom, as if her glorious past did not even exist. After a couple of decades, into her senior life, YOUN finally meets her second prime time as an actress.
Her First Prime TimeIn the 1970s YOUN represented the femme fatale image. It was director KIM Ki-young who invited her to film in the first place. KIM’s works are famous for their destructive, dark and grotesque approaches. The most famous of which is so called The Housemaid series. YOUN took the lead roles in two pivotal works of the series: Woman Of Fire and Insect Woman. In both films, she played a fatal and alluring mistress who seduces a rich man and destroys his family, as well as herself, which earned her a great reputation as an actress.
Her Second Prime TimeThe ones who recognized senior YOUN were major Korean cinema directors including HONG Sang-soo and IM Sang-soo. Since Hahaha (2010), every mother role in HONG’s films has gone to YOUN. HONG depicts a mother that is not cliched. Besides, IM turns YOUN into a self-reflexive or satirical character as in The Housemaid (2010) and The Taste of Money (2012). YOUN has now become an indispensable persona in HONG and IM’s works.
YOUN once confessed: "I hate it when actors discuss logic. Acting is to be done through feelings and sentiments. Ones that I hate the most are those who argue with the director at 3 o'clock in the morning during shooting, for things like whether you should collapse to the left or to the right, to get the right sentiment. But it doesn’t really matter which side, you just collapse, all the same. I get so mad when I see young actors like that, that I almost feel like beating them up. It is something that should have been discussed before coming for shooting. Once you are on set, you are to follow the director’s direction.” Maybe the reason for all directors from different times and with different perspectives to acknowledge YOUN as a great actress lies in her acting instincts and her deep faith in directors.
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