Sol Kyung-gu

Sol Kyung-gu (born May 14, 1967) is a South Korean actor.

Sol studied Theater and Film at Hanyang University.

Sol was born in Seocheon, ChungcheongNam on May 1, 1968.

He is the second son with one younger sister.

He and his family moved to Dohwa-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul when his father, who was a civil servant, transferred to the Mapo-gu Office.

Sol attended and then enrolled in and.

Sol's parents wanted him to go to an engineering college, thus guaranteeing him a stable job.

However, Sol entered the Department of Theater and Film of Hanyang University with the idea of becoming a film director.

Sol studied Theater and Film at Hanyang University (Class of '86).

Since 1988, Sol began taking taking on minor roles in television.

In the play, he was a star-actor who played 14 roles, but in television dramas, he was just an aspiring actor.

In the mid 1990s, Sol began taking on minor roles in feature films.

In May 1993, When Sol was in his 4th year of college, he directed play for the 1st Young Theatre Festival .

At that time, Seol planned to enter The 3rd KBS Talent Recruitment, but he had no choice but to give up the recruitment due to his professor's request.

He was also active in Dongsung-dong since the second semester of his senior year, including guest directing play Bison, a performance for the drama class at, as a part time job.

Gradually, he naturally gave up his dream of becoming a film director, and debuted in 1993 with the play Simbasame as Sol joined Hanyang Theater Company, a theater company with alumni of the Department of Theater and Film at Hanyang University as majority of its members.

When Sol was in his 4th year of college, Sol received a full scholarship with straight A credits and went up to the department at once.

Before graduating from Hanyang University, he received invitations from his advisor to study master at Hanyang University graduate school or Korea National University of Arts, but he refused.

Sol continued his theatre activities in Hanyang Theater Company, however Sol didn’t want to be under the shadow of his school.

After graduating, Sol left the company.

Upon his graduation in 1994, he appeared in numerous theatrical productions, such as the hit Korean adaptation of the German rock musical Subway Line 1, and productions of Sam Shepard's True West and A. R. Gurney's Love Letters.

In May 1994, Sol asked a college senior who was the head of the planning department at the theater company .

At for a part time job.

He met Kim Min-ki and was cast in hit Korean adaptation of the German rock musical Subway Line 1. Sol participated in this work from the premiere in 1994 to 1996, playing all but two of the 80 roles, accumulating various experiences and acting skills and earned big success.

In addition, he has been active as a theater actor and musical actor in Daehakro, appearing in plays such as Korean productions of Sam Shepard's True West and musical .

In 1996, Sol made his screen debut in his first film A Petal, playing the role of Woo-ri, a college student who is chasing the whereabouts of the female lead girl (Lee Jung-hyun) at the recommendation of director Shim Kwang-jin, a college classmate who was taking directing lessons from director Jang Seon-woo.

In 1997, Sol met Cha Seung-jae, the CEO of Sidus FNH, the producer of the film Girls' Night Out, which released in 1998.

Sol had minor role and his name was post in credit as a film actor.

Sol played a cartoonist who spends a night with Yeon (Jin Hee-kyung), a hotel employee in the play, and his acting was short but impressive.

He is best known for his collaborations with director Lee Chang-dong in Peppermint Candy (1999) and Oasis (2002), Public Enemy film series (2002–2008) for which he won the Baeksang Arts Award Grand Prize, and Silmido (2003) which became the highest-grossing film in South Korea at the time of release.

He then signed management contracts with Sidus HQ and made his breakthrough, with major roles in Rainbow Trout, Phantom: The Submarine, and The Bird That Stops in the Air (1999).

In early 1999, Sol was selected for the lead role through an audition in director Lee Chang-dong's film Peppermint Candy. Initially, Sol failed at the first audition, but the director's wife, known as the playwright of the play Confession, saw him in the audition film she saw in the living room by chance, and recommended him, saying, "Here's Kim Young-ho" he is famous.

In addition, director Lee Chang-dong revealed the reason for casting Seol Kyung-gu as follows."Unlike other actors, I rather liked that he hesitated and said that he had no confidence. He looked weak in charisma with an ordinary mask, but his face was different every time I saw him, and that seemed to enable him to express various colors as well as good and evil, so he was cast."In film Peppermint Candy, Sol played Kim Yeong-ho, a suicidal man devastated by the two-decades of historical change his country undergoes.

Sol is considered one of the troika of actors representing Chungmuro in the 2000s, alongside Choi Min-sik and Song Kang-ho.

Sol next appeared in a romantic comedy I Wish I Had a Wife with Jeon Do-yeon in 2001, played the role of Bong-su, an ordinary old bachelor bank clerk who yearns for romance.

His other notable credits include Jail Breakers (2002), Voice of a Murderer (2007), Tidal Wave (2009), The Tower (2012), Cold Eyes (2013), The Spy: Undercover Operation (2013), The Merciless (2017) and Memoir of a Murderer (2017).

He also won Best Actor at the Baeksang Arts Awards for his performances in Hope (2013) and Kingmaker (2022).

After shooting for six months from mid-May to the end of September, the film debuted on October 14 of that year as the opening film at the 4th Busan International Film Festival.

The film was acclaimed and Sol received rave reviews.

He swept 10 New Actor Awards and Best Actor Awards at the Korean Film Critics Association Award, Chunsa Film Awards, Blue Dragon Film Awards, Daejong Awards, and Baeksang Arts Awards.