Huh Joonho was born in 1964 to Heo Janggang, himself a popular film actor in the 1960s and 1970s with more than 300 films to his credit including classics like <Piagol> (1955). Huh began his acting career in 1985, as a part of the chorus for the musical <Wandering Stars>, an influential work of youth theater, and was cast later that year in the movie <Chung (Blue Sketch)> (1986). He appeared in many movies and TV series during the early 1990s, including the ...More

Huh Joonho was born in 1964 to Heo Janggang, himself a popular film actor in the 1960s and 1970s with more than 300 films to his credit including classics like <Piagol> (1955). Huh began his acting career in 1985, as a part of the chorus for the musical <Wandering Stars>, an influential work of youth theater, and was cast later that year in the movie <Chung (Blue Sketch)> (1986). He appeared in many movies and TV series during the early 1990s, including the antiwar manifesto <White Badge> (1992) in which he played one of the leads, but he had to wait a few more years and the release of <The Terrorist> (1995) to make a name for himself, winning Best Supporting Actor at the Blue Dragon Film Awards for good measure. However, his musical career still remained his top priority. He notably played the lead role in the Seensee Company production of Eric Woolfson’s musical <Gambler> for over a decade since its creation in 1999. With this performance being recognized with a Korea Musical Award for Best Actor in 2000 and his long experience in physically demanding roles, film directors started to see him early on as a supporting actor they could rely on, and so it was not rare for him to end up in action films, such as in <Silmido> (2003) which earned him Best Supporting Actor at the Grand Bell Awards. In the hit drama series <All in>, he played Lee Byunghun’s friend and was particularly popular as the father of the titular character in the period TV drama <Jumong>. After <Moss> (2010), he temporarily left the screens, having retreated to the US from where he continued to manage his musical production company. He made his comeback in 2016 after he was offered a small role in <The Merciless> (2017) and has been very active ever since. He was particularly praised for his depiction of a small entrepreneur facing bankruptcy as a consequence of the 1997 Asian financial crisis in <Default> (2018). In 2019, he played the former tutor of the lead character in the Korean-language Netflix Original series <Kingdom>. After starring alongside Choi Minsik and Han Sukkyu in the historical film <Forbidden Dream> (2019) which retraced the events leading to the greatest inventions under King Sejong, Huh joined the main cast of Ryoo Seungwan’s blockbuster action drama <Escape from Mogadishu> (2021), playing a North Korean ambassador in Somalia requesting the assistance from his South Korean counterpart.

Less