Born in 1971 in Korea, Don Lee, also known as Ma Dongseok, immigrated with his family to the US in 1989. After his graduation from Columbia State University, he worked as a physical trainer for Mixed Martial Arts fighters. He got his start in movies relatively late, but it was precisely because he passed an audition for a role in 2005’s <Heaven’s Soldiers> that he decided to return to Korea. Due to his impressive stature, he has been offered many supporting roles of...
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Born in 1971 in Korea, Don Lee, also known as Ma Dongseok, immigrated with his family to the US in 1989. After his graduation from Columbia State University, he worked as a physical trainer for Mixed Martial Arts fighters. He got his start in movies relatively late, but it was precisely because he passed an audition for a role in 2005’s <Heaven’s Soldiers> that he decided to return to Korea. Due to his impressive stature, he has been offered many supporting roles of “tough guys” in genre fare such as <The Good, the Bad and the Weird> (2008) and <Midnight FM> (2010), before landing a meatier part in the hit Ryoo Seungwan thriller <The Unjust> (2010). In 2011, he appeared in more varied works such as <Quick>, <Pain> and <Perfect Game>. 2012 was his breakout year as he took on big parts as gruff and often lovable characters in a wide range of hits including <Nameless Gangster : Rules of the Time>. His performance as a loan shark who terrorizes everyone around him in <The Neighbors> made a strong impression, with many people in the audience admitting that they felt sympathetic toward the character even though he really looked the part. After taking on the first of a series of leading roles with the courtroom drama <Norigae> in 2012, he starred in 2013 in <Murderer>, and in the commercial realm he played comic supporting parts in the period films <Kundo: Age of the Rampant> and <The Royal Tailor>. The following year, he was seen as a detective in the thriller <The Chronicles of the Evil>, while he also toplined the island mystery-thriller <Deep Trap>. Although his appearance in the 2014 hit crime action film <Veteran> was but a cameo, his performance as the delicate manager of a stationary shop went a long way towards establishing him as an actor who is self-aware of his image and knows how to play it off. It was with Yeon Sangho’s first live-action film, the 2016 zombie-on-a-train thriller <TRAIN TO BUSAN>, that he rose to fame not only in Korea, but also abroad as the film became at the time the biggest success for a Korean film on the international market. Lee then went on a long series of leading roles that cemented his status as Korea’s new action hero, starting with <THE OUTLAWS> (2017), in which he starred as a detective who doesn’t pull any punches –literally – and whose name Ma Seokdo is an obvious riff on the actor’s name. The movie was a surprise hit, selling close to 7 million tickets despite the fact it was rated for mature audience. This was followed by many titles released in quick succession between 2018 and 2019, among which <Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days> (2017), <Unstoppable> (2018), <Ordinary People> (2018), <The Ganster, The Cop, The Devil> (2019>, <The Bad Guys: Reign of Chaos> (2019) and <ASHFALL> (2019). With Lee being virtually a constant presence in some form or another in theaters, and audiences noticing common threads between all these movies, some fans and film critics declared that the Don Lee films had become a genre unto itself. His rapid rise to fame culminated with the stunning news of his casting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing Gilgamesh in <Eternals> (2021). It may come as no surprise then that even the Covid-19 pandemic was no match for Don Lee; the follow-up to <THE OUTLAWS>, <The Roundup> (2022) was widely celebrated for its surprising commercial success. Many observers saw it as a sign of the long-awaited return to form for the Korean film industry, as it was the first film to cross the elusive 10 million admission mark in Korea since Covid-19 landed on the peninsula – but already the fourth in Lee’s career. It even went the extra mile by becoming one of the highest grossing Korean films ever, with more than KRW 130 billion in total gross. His latest, and third in this movie franchise, <THE ROUNDUP : NO WAY OUT> (2022) appears set to repeat the feat in 2023 as it already became this year’s most watched and highest-grossing film release.
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