Tv & Film
Jeon Do-yeon Channels Mom Life for Netflix's 'Kill Boksoon'
Within the Korean film industry, Jeon Do-yeon is both a big star and a deeply respected actor’s actor. In over 25 years on-screen, she has appeared in scores of K-dramas and over 20 films, including numerous titles now considered modern Korean classics. Now, she’s poised for greater global exposure as the star of Netflix's forthcoming action drama Kill Boksoon, a film that blends everything international audiences have come to love about Korean cinema: wit, genre invention, powerful performances, slick production values and a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Soon after her breakthrough on the small screen in the 1990s, Jeon quickly earned a reputation as a uniquely chameleonic film actress, inhabiting a diverse range of characters — from a doctor (A Promise, 1998) to a school girl (The Harmonium in My Memory, 1999), an adulterous wife (Happy End, 1999), a dreamy bank teller (I Wish I Had a Wife, 2001), a time traveler (My Mother, the Mermaid, 2004) and a prostitute who contracts AIDS (You Are My Sunshine, 2005). She then achieved international acclaim when she became only the second Korean ever to win Cannes’ best actress award, in recognition of her harrowing performance in Lee Chang-dong’s searing existential drama Secret Sunshine (2007). She then made waves again in Im Sang-soo’s landmark erotic thriller The Housemaid (2010). More recent performances have included a heartrending turn as a bereaved mother in Birthday (2019), the first film to explore South Korea’s 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster, which took the lives of hundreds of school children; and a more upbeat appearance as a murderous lady gangster in Kim Yong-hoon’s black comedy thriller Beasts Clawing at Straws (2020).
Jeon is making her first trip to the Berlin International Film Festival this week in support of Kill Boksoon, Netflix’s buzziest Korean film of 2023.. Written and directed by Byun Sung-hyun, the film features Jeon as a legendary contract killer who also happens to be a single mom to a teenage daughter. Caught between the mission of killing someone and the duties of raising someone, Jeon’s character, the titular Boksoon, decides to step back from her double life by refusing to complete an assigned mission. In the process, she becomes the target of Seoul’s entire underground hitman industry. The film world premieres in the Berlinale Special section on Saturday, Feb. 18 ahead of its worldwide launch on Netflix on March 31.
The Hollywood Reporter connected with Jeon via Zoom in Seoul to chat about her own double life as a mom and a movie star — and the long and singular career that preceded her first appearance at the Berlinale.
What initially drew you to this character and film?
Well, from the title to every detail of the story, this is a film that came about from my conversations with director Byun. He approached me saying that he wanted to do a film with me, or even about me, and after many conversations, we started to conceive of this idea of the female killer, Gil Bok-soon. So it all started from there, even before the script was written. As for the character and her attributes, director Byun told me that he wrote it as a result of his observations of me, including my relationship with my daughter. So, when I eventually read the script, I felt like I was getting almost a third-person view on my own life. I came away from it thinking, “Oh, this must be how some people see me.”
Did director Byun explain what it was about you that inspired him to write this character who lives a double life as a contract killer and an ordinary mom? In a way, I can sort of see how this plays upon your pre-existing screen persona, because you’ve often played characters who have a unique mix of natural warmth and charm, and an underlying strength or fearlessness.
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Within the Korean film industry, Jeon Do-yeon is both a big star and a deeply respected actor’s actor. In over 25 years on-screen, she has appeared in scores of K-dramas and over 20 films, including numerous titles now considered modern Korean classics. Now, she’s poised for greater global exposure as the star of Netflix's forthcoming action drama Kill Boksoon, a film that blends everything international audiences have come to love about Korean cinema: wit, genre invention, powerful performances, slick production values and a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Soon after her breakthrough on the small screen in the 1990s, Jeon quickly earned a reputation as a uniquely chameleonic film actress, inhabiting a diverse range of characters — from a doctor (A Promise, 1998) to a school girl (The Harmonium in My Memory, 1999), an adulterous wife (Happy End, 1999), a dreamy bank teller (I Wish I Had a Wife, 2001), a time traveler (My Mother, the Mermaid, 2004) and a prostitute who contracts AIDS (You Are My Sunshine, 2005). She then achieved international acclaim when she became only the second Korean ever to win Cannes’ best actress award, in recognition of her harrowing performance in Lee Chang-dong’s searing existential drama Secret Sunshine (2007). She then made waves again in Im Sang-soo’s landmark erotic thriller The Housemaid (2010). More recent performances have included a heartrending turn as a bereaved mother in Birthday (2019), the first film to explore South Korea’s 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster, which took the lives of hundreds of school children; and a more upbeat appearance as a murderous lady gangster in Kim Yong-hoon’s black comedy thriller Beasts Clawing at Straws (2020).
Jeon is making her first trip to the Berlin International Film Festival this week in support of Kill Boksoon, Netflix’s buzziest Korean film of 2023.. Written and directed by Byun Sung-hyun, the film features Jeon as a legendary contract killer who also happens to be a single mom to a teenage daughter. Caught between the mission of killing someone and the duties of raising someone, Jeon’s character, the titular Boksoon, decides to step back from her double life by refusing to complete an assigned mission. In the process, she becomes the target of Seoul’s entire underground hitman industry. The film world premieres in the Berlinale Special section on Saturday, Feb. 18 ahead of its worldwide launch on Netflix on March 31.
The Hollywood Reporter connected with Jeon via Zoom in Seoul to chat about her own double life as a mom and a movie star — and the long and singular career that preceded her first appearance at the Berlinale.
What initially drew you to this character and film?
Well, from the title to every detail of the story, this is a film that came about from my conversations with director Byun. He approached me saying that he wanted to do a film with me, or even about me, and after many conversations, we started to conceive of this idea of the female killer, Gil Bok-soon. So it all started from there, even before the script was written. As for the character and her attributes, director Byun told me that he wrote it as a result of his observations of me, including my relationship with my daughter. So, when I eventually read the script, I felt like I was getting almost a third-person view on my own life. I came away from it thinking, “Oh, this must be how some people see me.”
Did director Byun explain what it was about you that inspired him to write this character who lives a double life as a contract killer and an ordinary mom? In a way, I can sort of see how this plays upon your pre-existing screen persona, because you’ve often played characters who have a unique mix of natural warmth and charm, and an underlying strength or fearlessness.
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