Lee Jun Ki

Lee Jun-ki (born April 17, 1982, in Busan, South Korea) is a South Korean actor, model and singer, who Koreans regard as a quintessential kkonminam idol. He rose to fame as Gong-gil in The King and the Clown. In August 2009, Lee Jun Ki was appointed an ambassador for Korea tourism by the Korea Tourism Organization.

Early Life

In his adolescent years, Lee was a fairly normal individual who enjoyed sports and computers. He first became interested in the performing arts as a high school student after watching a performance of Hamlet. Lee initially did not get into college and instead moved to Seoul with almost nothing in his pocket, but a dream to work in the entertainment industry. For the next couple of years, Lee worked at various part-time jobs, before gaining acceptance into the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

Career

The King and the Clown

In 2005, his first major acting role came in The King and the Clown (왕의 남자), in which he took on the role of a somewhat feminine clown in the late 15th century. Lee faced the challenge as a male actor of playing out Gongil's femininity, which attracts the attention of many other men in the film. The film became one of the highest grossing South Korean-made movies in South Korea, unexpectedly replacing Taegukgi as the most-watched film in Korean history with over 12.3 million viewers. Lee's salary for the role was a comparatively low US$100,000.

Lee was against the halving of screen quotas in South Korea that allows foreign films to be shown in theaters on certain days, while domestic films are allotted another amount of days. He believed that without the screen quotas, The King and the Clown would not have been as successful in competing against foreign films.

Producer Lee Jun Ik revealed the story of how he chose Lee for The King and the Clown by just seeing him do handstands, saying, "Just because of handstands, Lee Jun Ki became the person he is today." After the film, Lee became "an icon" of the South Korean "pretty boy" aesthetic.

Lee has since tried to diminish his pretty boy image. Lee said Gong-gil’s character in The King and the Clown felt like a foot chain for him so he wanted to escape from it, stating, "After my performance in The King and the Clown, I found myself at the forefront of this ‘pretty boy’ trend, whether or not that was my intention. Suddenly, people were interested in me, and there was all this praise and criticism all at the same time. Everything was just so overwhelming. I felt like I was floating on air." Lee revealed that there are times where he feels gloomy and can’t find answers to his questions but he hopes to not give up his acting no matter what happens and die while acting, showing his passion and love for acting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Jun-ki