Song Hye Kyo

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Song Hye Kyo

Song Hye-kyo (Korean: 송혜교, born November 23, 1982) is a South Korean model and actress. She gained popularity through television dramas such as Autumn in My Heart (2000), All In (2003), and Full House (2004). Song debuted in the entertainment industry in 1996 when she won the Grand Prize in SunKyung Smart (a school uniform company) when she was finishing her third year in junior high school. It was not long until she starred in her first drama, Merry Morning. Since then, she would continue to star in a string of various dramas and sitcoms but it wasn't until the KBS drama Autumn in My Heart in 2000 with Song Seung-hun and Won Bin that she rose to fame throughout Asia. In 2003, her popularity continued to climb when she played a leading role alongside Lee Byung-hun in the gambling drama All In. The following year, she co-starred with singer Rain in the hit romantic comedy series Full House. After the pan-Asian success of Full House, she made her big-screen debut in My Girl and I (a Korean adaptation of Crying Out Love in the Center of the World), which was panned by audiences and critics alike.

Vocal about her dissatisfaction with typecasting in the roles she was being offered, Song went on a 2-year hiatus. She returned to acting in 2007, as the kisaeng Hwang Jini in the film adaptation of Hwang Jin Yi. The producers were initially against her casting, but Song worked hard to prove them wrong. A year later, she made her American debut in the Hollywood indie Make Yourself at Home, a psychological thriller about a girl who was born to a shaman mother and tries to flee her fate by becoming an immigrant bride in the U.S. Despite Song's attempts to challenge herself, both films underwhelmed at the box office. She made her TV comeback in late 2008 with The World That They Live In, a series set at a broadcast station in which Song and Hyun Bin play drama PDs who work together and fall in love. In 2010, she starred in Camellia, an omnibus pic made up of three feature films directed by three Asian directors. Each episode is set in the past, present and future of the city of Busan, Korea. In the film's final segment Love for Sale, Song and Kang Dong-won play former lovers who forget their memories about each other which later leads them to a fatal destiny. Chinese director John Woo announced Song's casting in his film 1949, but the project was cancelled. Wong Kar-wai then cast her in a supporting role in his biopic about Bruce Lee's kung fu master Ip Man. Titled The Grandmasters, Song learned Cantonese and martial arts for the film.

When Song was born, she was sick and her parents and doctor thought she would not make it. Miraculously she survived and her parents only registered her birth on February 26, 1983 (instead of her actual birthdate). She has no siblings. Her talents are ice skating, swimming, and playing the piano. Song has been in highly publicized relationships with two of her leading men. She started dating Lee Byung-hun while filming All In in 2003. Their relationship and subsequent break-up in 2004 generated much media attention and gossip. The experience taught her to draw a clear line between private and public life, saying in a 2008 Dong-A Ilbo interview, "The viewers suddenly learned, while in the midst of watching a drama I was acting in, that I was somebody’s girlfriend. In the end, this was an obstacle and only served to create a sense of dislike among viewers." In another interview for Fuji TV, Song was asked about her first love and fans speculated that she was obliquely referring to Lee. Song kept in touch with Hyun Bin after The World That They Live In ended, but it was their separation while Hyun was filming Friend, Our Legend in Busan that made them realize they were in love. They announced their dating status in June 2009.