Han Ye-seul is an American-born South Korean actress. She made her acting
debut in the sitcom Nonstop 4, and has since played leading roles in television
dramas such as Couple or Trouble, Tazza, and Birth of a Beauty, as well as the
films Miss Gold Digger and Penny Pinchers.
Early life Leslie Kim was born and raised in Los
Angeles, California. She attended Cerritos High School and graduated from
Cerritos College with an associate degree in Computer Graphics. She is
fluent in both English and Korean. Career
= Acting debut= She began her modeling career in South
Korea after winning the SBS Supermodel Contest in 2001. Under the stage name
Han Ye-seul, she made her acting debut in the popular sitcom Nonstop 4 in 2003.
Han quickly rose to fame, and she renounced her U.S. citizenship in 2004
and became a naturalized South Korean citizen to continue establishing herself
in Korean entertainment. But her performances in Forbidden Love and That
Summer's Typhoon received poor reviews, with critics dismissing her as primarily
a commercial model and not a real actress.
= Breakthrough= Han proved her detractors wrong with
Couple or Trouble, a remake of Overboard written by the Hong Sisters. Playing a
spoiled heiress who becomes an amnesiac after a yacht accident, Han was praised
for her comic timing and the series was a hit.
She further embraced the screwball comedy genre with her first film Miss
Gold Digger. Despite the film's lackluster box office, Han's portrayal
of an advertising executive who juggles four different men in order to catch the
ideal husband won her several Best New Actress accolades from local
award-giving bodies, including the prestigious Grand Bell Awards and Blue
Dragon Film Awards. Han next starred in Tazza, a TV
adaptation of Huh Young-man's manhwa of the same name about gamblers and card
sharps. The Lee Kyung-hee-penned Will It Snow for Christmas?, a melodrama about
childhood sweethearts who reunite as adults, followed in 2009.
= Spy Myung-wol controversy= In 2011, Han was cast as the titular
character in Spy Myung-wol, as a North Korean agent on a mission to kidnap a
top South Korean Hallyu star, who ends up falling for him. But the series
gained notoriety when Han failed to show up for her scheduled filming on August
14-15 and instead flew to Los Angeles on August 16; it was the first instance of
a leading actor abruptly leaving in the middle of a Korean drama shoot. Her
then-agency SidusHQ cited conflicts with television director Hwang In-hyuk over
her hectic working conditions, and that exhaustion had compromised her judgment.
Han's absence effectively halted production, and the KBS network
lambasted her actions as "unilateral, irresponsible and will not be
tolerated," while Lee Kim Productions threatened legal action. After extensive
press coverage, Han returned to Korea and continued filming Spy Myung-wol on
August 18. Upon arrival at Incheon International Airport, she apologized
but maintained that her demands had been legitimate, "I want to believe that I
did the right thing." Han drew harsh criticism from TV industry professionals
and viewers, but some fans defended her, saying the stressful Korean drama
live-shoot system was at fault. Romantic comedy film Penny Pinchers was
released two months after Spy Myung-wol finished airing. In it, Han shed her
glamorous image to play an extremely frugal woman who considers love a
frivolous expense and teaches an unemployed playboy the art of penny
pinching. = Comeback=
After the Spy Myung-wol fiasco, public backlash forced Han to go on a
three-year hiatus from acting. In late 2014, she made a successful
comeback in Birth of a Beauty, where Han played a warm-hearted ajumma who
overcomes her husband's infidelity by undergoing a head-to-toe makeover
involving plastic surgery and weight loss.
Personal life On 2 May 2011, Han hit a man surnamed Do
on the hip with the wing mirror of her Porsche while driving into the parking
lot of her home in an apartment building in Samseong-dong. Do sustained minor
injuries and Han's lawyers offered him ₩5 million in compensation, but Do
claimed that she had fled the scene. Her then-agency SidusHQ denied this, saying
she had apologized and checked if he was okay. After an investigation, police
cleared Han of the hit-and-run allegations.
Han has been dating YG Entertainment record producer Teddy Park since May
2013. In January 2015, the FSS included Han in
a list of people who were found to have violated the foreign currency-related
law by failing to report their asset acquisition to relevant authorities.
This referred to a commercial building in Koreatown, Los Angeles that Han had
bought in 2011, but her agency KeyEast issued a statement that the omission had
been a technical mistake, because Han had transferred the building's ownership
to a company in which she was the major shareholder and was unaware that she
should report it. Filmography
= Television drama= = Film=
= Music video= = Variety show=
Discography Awards and nominations
References External links
Han Ye-seul on Cyworld Han Ye-seul at HanCinema
Han Ye-seul at the Korean Movie Database Han Ye-seul at the Internet Movie
Database