Lee Jung-jae

The Face That Sold Coffee

Lee Jung-jae waited tables at a café in Apgujeong when designer Ha Yong-soo spotted him. He had no dramatic training or industry connections. He simply needed money to pay the bills and a look that fit the aesthetics of the 1990s.

In 1994, he made his film debut in The Young Man. South Korean critics were struck by his cold gaze and a physical presence that filled the frame effortlessly. He won every best new actor award of that year.

And the gamble paid off.

But the real turning point came in 1999 with City of the Rising Sun. There he met Jung Woo-sung, his partner and best friend ever since. Years later, they together founded the agency Artist Company to manage their own careers and those of new talent.

Before he turned thirty, he was already a star in Seoul. But fame in South Korea is volatile, and the years that followed tested his commercial staying power.

The Rebirth of the Elegant Villain

In the mid-2000s, his name began to lose momentum at the box office. The productions he chose did not connect with audiences, and many critics considered his days as a leading man over. He spent several years in relative obscurity.

In 2010, he accepted a supporting role in The Housemaid. It was a risky decision. He played a rich, despicable, cynical man that broke with his image as a romantic hero. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and earned him the respect of auteur directors.

From then on, he chose darker and more complex characters. In 2012, he took part in The Thieves, a heist film that sold 12.9 million tickets in his home country. He regained his reputation as a reliable star for big-budget productions.

In 2013, he starred in New World. His performance as an undercover cop inside the mafia is still a benchmark for Asian noir. He learned that silence on camera communicates more than shouting.

He was not seeking approval from Hollywood.

The Leap into the Void of Directing

In 2021, the whole world came to know his face thanks to Squid Game. Playing Seong Gi-hun required him to abandon his natural elegance to portray a desperate, pitiful man. The impact was massive.

In 2022, he took home the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He was the first Asian performer to win it for a role in a non-English-speaking language. But while the world was talking about him, Lee Jung-jae was already focused on his next move behind the camera.

He made his directorial debut in 2022 with Hunt. It is an espionage thriller set in the 1980s that he wrote and starred in. The film cost about $15 million and was sold to more than 200 territories before its international release.

In 2024, he joined the Star Wars franchise with the series The Acolyte. He had to learn English phonetically to play the Jedi Master Sol. He spent months training fight choreography with lightsabers under military-style discipline.

In 2024, he filmed the second season of Squid Game with a budget triple that of the first. Filming for the new episodes stretched across nearly eleven months in various locations throughout South Korea.

The series production enforced a strict 100-page confidentiality agreement for every member of the technical crew.