Jung Woo-sung

Jung Woo-sung (born April 22, 1973) is a South Korean actor and the first Korean UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.

Jung Woo-sung made his film debut with a leading role in 1994's The Fox with Nine Tails, one of the first Korean fantasy movies and the first to use computer-generated imagery.

For his first major TV drama part in Asphalt Man (1995) he won Best New Actor at SBS Drama Awards and at the 32nd Baeksang Arts Awards (TV).

Jung started his career as a fashion model, rising to stardom and teenage cult status with the gangster film Beat (1997), for which he won Best New Actor at the 17th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards.

Jung is also widely popular in other Asian countries, notably in Japan.

He debuted together with actress Ko So-young, who later co-starred with him twice including in his breakthrough 1997 film Beat.

Directed by Kim Sung-su, Beat is a story of a high school student forced into gang life.

The movie brought Jung widespread fame and started his rise to Korea's A-list actor and one of the most sought-after commercial models.

In 1999, he starred in director City of the Rising Sun, playing an unsuccessful boxer who forms a friendship with an unlucky swindler.

His co-lead in the movie, actor Lee Jung-jae, became his lifelong friend.

Jung later played a naval lieutenant in Phantom: The Submarine and a marathoner in Love.

2001's Musa marked his third collaboration with director Kim Sung-su.

In the epic blockbuster, Jung played opposite Chinese star Zhang Ziyi and received wide exposure abroad as well as in Korea.

After spending time in 2002 directing a series of music videos and appearing in a large number of commercials, Jung took on the eccentric lead role in Mutt Boy, the fifth film by director Kwak Kyung-taek.

Jung's next roles were in highly romantic roles that used his established screen image.

In the box office hit A Moment to Remember he played an architect whose wife (played by Son Ye-jin) is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and in the Netherlands-set Daisy, he played a hired assassin who falls in love with a street artist played by Jun Ji-hyun.

He portrayed a happily committed fireman in Sad Movie, and played a demon hunter seeking for lost love in The Restless.

Kim Jee-woon's "kimchi western" The Good, the Bad, the Weird inspired by Sergio Leone's work, would become one of Jung's most iconic roles.

He used his physicality to great effect as the Clint Eastwood counterpart in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

He is a versatile actor known for playing leading roles in a wide spectrum of genres including high-grossing box office hits: The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), Cold Eyes (2013), The Divine Move (2014), The King (2017), Steel Rain (2017), Hunt (2022), 12.12: The Day (2023); dramas: City of the Rising Sun (1998) and Mutt Boy (2003); historical epic: Musa (2001); romance: A Moment to Remember (2004); crime thrillers: Asura: The City of Madness (2016) and Beasts Clawing at Straws (2020).

The film was screened out of competition at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival which also marked its world premiere.

Jung attended the festival together with his co-stars.

He won Best Supporting Actor at the 3rd Asian Film Awards and Outstanding Achievement in Acting at the 2008 Hawaii International Film Festival for his performance.

Shortly afterwards, Jung worked again with Kim Jee-woon on a short film for W Korea.

Jung then starred alongside Chinese actress Gao Yuanyuan in Hur Jin-ho's romance film A Season of Good Rain, and Su Chao-pin's martial arts film Reign of Assassins with Michelle Yeoh.

His other prominent roles were in romantic dramas Padam Padam (2011) and Tell Me That You Love Me (2023–24).

Jung grew up in Sadang-dong, then one of the poorest neighborhoods in Seoul.

He gave up studying, dropping out of high school after one year, to work and thus support the family budget.

He never hid this fact or regretted doing so.

He was tall in elementary school, his height causing him to constantly hunch.

When trying to break into the film industry, he was told he was too tall to become an actor, so he first worked as a model.

Jung Woo-sung, who was selected as an actor through street casting by Cha Seung-jae, former CEO of Sidus, who was the head of the production department at the film company Shin Cine at the time.

In 2011, Jung was cast in the English-language 3D remake of John Woo's The Killer.

The film was to be shot in Los Angeles, and reunite him with A Moment to Remember director John H. Lee and Reign of Assassins director John Woo acting also as producer.

The project was put on hold while John Woo worked on another film.

The project has not progressed any further.Jung drew praise in his first villain role in Cold Eyes, an action thriller that became a box office hit in 2013.

He portrayed the ruthless head of a criminal organization specializing in bank robbery, eluding the detectives chasing him with uncanny dexterity.

Jung next played a baduk player seeking revenge in The Divine Move, followed by an adulterous university professor gradually losing his eyesight in Scarlet Innocence.

His critically acclaimed film Innocent Witness (2019) won him the Grand Prize at the 55th Baeksang Arts Awards.

He is also an accomplished television actor.