Youn Yuh-jung

Youn Yuh-jung (born June 19, 1947) is a South Korean actress. In a film and television career spanning nearly 40 years, Youn is best known for starring in Kim Ki-young's Woman of Fire (1971), Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid (2010) and The Taste of Money (2012).

Youn Yuh-jung was a freshman at Hanyang University majoring in Korean Language and Literature, when she passed the open auditions held by TBC in 1966. She dropped out of college, and made her acting debut in the television drama Mister Gong in 1967. Youn shot to stardom in 1971 with two memorable portrayals of femme fatales. Her first film, Kim Ki-young's Woman of Fire became a critical and commercial hit, for which she won Best Actress at the Sitges Film Festival. This was followed by the MBC period drama series Jang Hui-bin where she played the titular infamous royal concubine. Kim was considered Korea's first style-conscious, experimental director, and Youn didn't balk in playing risque, provocative characters that explore the grotesque in the female psyche in further collaborations with him such as The Insect Woman (1972) and Be a Wicked Woman (1990). Audiences found Youn's fast way of speaking and atypical appearance refreshing and she frequently took roles in TV dramas depicting a modern woman of the new generation, notably in Stepmother (1972) written by Kim Soo-hyun.

At the peak of her career, Youn retired after she married singer Jo Young-nam in 1975, then immigrated to the United States. In 1984, she returned to Korea and permanently resumed her acting career. She and Jo divorced in 1987.

Making such a stellar comeback after taking a long break was an unusual feat for a Korean middle-aged actress. Though most actresses her age played cliched self-sacrificing mothers or coarse ajummas, Youn's acting range led to her being cast in more complex, stylish, and independent roles. In A Good Lawyer's Wife (2003), she drew critical acclaim for her nonchalant acting as a mother-in-law who neglected her husband dying of liver cancer and enjoyed extramarital affairs. Her frank and confident persona again manifested itself in E J-yong's mockumentary Actresses (2009). Youn continued playing supporting roles in film and television, notably her award-winning scene-stealing turn in The Housemaid (2010). She reunited with director Im Sang-soo for the fourth time in The Taste of Money (2012), as a cruel chaebol heiress at the center of the drama that unfolds and touches upon the themes of corruption, greed and sex. Youn said, "I don't mind being called an old actress, but I do worry about how to carry on my acting career without looking like an old fool."

In 2013, she was cast against type as a loving mother to three loser children in Song Hae-sung's Boomerang Family. Later in the year, Youn gained renewed mainstream popularity after appearing in her first ever reality show Sisters Over Flowers, a backpacking travel show shot in Croatia.

Youn starred in two leading roles in 2015: Kang Je-gyu's Salut d'Amour about the romance between an elderly supermarket employee and a flower shop owner, and Grandmother Gye-choon about a Jeju Island female diver who reunites with her long-lost granddaughter.

Film

Television series