Son Hyun Joo

1 Before becoming a television actor, Son Hyun Joo performed with the respected Korean theater troupe Michu, where he developed the acting techniques that would later define his career.

2 He entered television through KBS's 14th open recruitment for actors in 1991, beginning a career that would eventually span more than three decades.

3 During his early career, he sometimes boarded television production buses outside broadcasting stations without knowing whether he would receive a role, hoping to find opportunities on set.

4 He recalled that some of his earliest television roles were so small that his characters were addressed only by generic expressions rather than proper names.

5 Early in his career, he was nicknamed the "two-week actor" because supporting performers could unexpectedly lose their roles after just a few weeks.

6 His breakthrough came with the 1995 television drama Even If the Wind Blows, which helped him gain wider recognition at approximately 30 years old.

7 In the enormously popular 1996 drama First Love, he portrayed Joo Jung Nam, an aspiring musician who performs at a nightclub and remains devoted to his family.

8 His singing scenes in First Love became so popular that he released a music album, giving him an unexpected experience in the recording industry.

9 He received the Best Supporting Actor award at the 1996 KBS Drama Awards for First Love, marking an important milestone in his early television career.

10 He earned praise for portraying a complicated husband in My Rosy Life (2005), a family melodrama starring the late actress Choi Jin Sil.

11 Son Hyun Joo won the Grand Prize (Daesang) at the 2012 SBS Drama Awards for The Chaser, beating several prominent stars and achieving one of the biggest successes of his career.

12 He also won Best Actor in Television at the 2013 Baeksang Arts Awards for The Chaser, further establishing his reputation as a leading dramatic actor.

13 His 2013 thriller Hide and Seek marked his first major leading role in a feature film, more than two decades after his television debut.

14 In Secretly Greatly (2013), he played a North Korean intelligence officer, taking on a darker character in a film starring Kim Soo Hyun.

15 His performance in The Chronicles of Evil (2015) explored the psychological turmoil of a respected detective who becomes involved in a crime he attempts to conceal.

16 In the 2015 thriller The Phone, he portrayed a man who receives a mysterious telephone call from his wife one year after her murder.

17 He became the third South Korean actor to win Best Actor at the Moscow International Film Festival when he received the award for Ordinary Person in 2017.

18 He was unable to attend the Moscow International Film Festival's award ceremony because he was filming another project, so director Kim Bong Han accepted the award on his behalf.

19 Son Hyun Joo has actively supported younger theater actors. In a 2017 interview, he revealed that he kept approximately 40 aspiring actors' profiles on his phone to help them find auditions and acting opportunities.

20 He has expressed a strong attachment to theater and has spoken about wanting to return to the stage despite his successful television and film career.

21 In interviews, he has emphasized that good acting depends as much on listening and reacting to fellow performers as it does on delivering dialogue.

22 He avoided historical dramas for more than 20 years after experiencing a horseback-riding accident early in his career. He eventually returned to the genre with Jesters: The Game Changers (2019).

23 He received a Presidential Commendation at the 2017 Korean Popular Culture and Arts Awards for his contributions to South Korea's entertainment industry.

24 In The Good Detective (2020), he portrayed Kang Do Chang, a veteran investigator whose experience and sense of justice frequently clash with the realities of police work. He reprised the role in the drama's second season in 2022.

25 In Your Honor (2024), he starred opposite Kim Myung Min in a crime thriller about two fathers on opposite sides of the law, exploring the lengths parents will go to protect their children.