Ha Ji-won

One hundred failures before her first contract

Jeon Hae-rim didn't break into the industry through the front door. Before landing her first supporting role, she was turned down at more than one hundred consecutive auditions. That number would have crushed any aspiring actor, but she chose to change both strategy and identity. She adopted the name Ha Ji-won because it was the name of her manager's first love at the time.

In 1996, she made her debut in the youth drama New Generation Report: Adults Don’t Know. It was a brief, technical appearance. She wasn't chasing instant fame but trying to understand how a real film set worked. Her real break, however, came with genre films.

Horror films were her first real refuge.

In the year 2000, she appeared in Truth and Nightmare. These performances earned her the nickname queen of horror in South Korea. Two years later, in 2002, the film Phone confirmed that her on-screen presence guaranteed box office returns. That psychological thriller raked in millions and put her on the radar of top directors in Seoul.

Physical endurance as a work method

In 2003 she accepted the lead role in Damo. It was a period drama in which she played a low-ranking detective in the Joseon era. For this project she learned martial arts and sword handling. She refused to use stunt doubles for the most dangerous risk scenes.

And the gamble paid off.

The series sparked an unprecedented fan phenomenon online. Shortly after, in 2004, she starred in What Happened in Bali. The drama reached a 40% viewership rating in its home country. That commercial success allowed her to start choosing projects with a freedom few actresses had in that decade.

Before shooting Hwang Jini in 2006, she spent months studying traditional Korean dance and calligraphy. She didn't want to imitate the movements but to perform them with technical precision. International critics took notice of her ability to carry long-running historical dramas. For her, physical effort has always been an extension of the script.

Record-breaking figures and business control

In 2009, she appeared in Haeundae, the first major disaster film in Korean cinema. The production drew over 10 million moviegoers in theaters. That changed her financial standing forever. She was no longer just a television actress but a safe bet for major film studios making action movies.

In 2010, she landed Secret Garden. The series was a massive export hit across Asia. But behind the romantic comedy was grueling physical work to shoot the action scenes of her character. So in 2013, she took control of her career and founded her own talent agency, Haewadal Entertainment.

That same year, she starred in Empress Ki, a 51-episode production that required 16-hour shooting days for months. The series remained the top-rated show in its time slot throughout its run. In 2013, she won the Grand Prize at the MBC Drama Awards for her portrayal of the empress of the Yuan dynasty.

Managing her own image became her absolute priority.

In 2020, she released the film Pawn, playing the adult version of a girl rescued by debt collectors. In 2022, she returned to television in Curtain Call, playing the heir to a hotel chain. Away from the spotlight, in 2021, she exhibited her oil paintings at a Seoul gallery under the title of an abstract series. In 2023, she signed on to appear on the entertainment program Kiss or Kill, produced for digital platforms.