Soo Ae | 수애 | About

Soo Ae was stopped in the street in Apgujeong just out of school by a record agent, and came within six months of debuting in a girl group — hard training, no album at the end of it. "I didn't sing well," she said later, "but the six months I spent with the team was so fun. I was lucky to get into acting." She made her television debut in a one-act MBC drama in 2002, led "Love Letter", "Merry Go Round" and "April Kiss", and became widely known through the historical drama "Emperor of the Sea" (2004), which sold across Asia, South America and the Middle East.

The melodramas got her called the queen of tears, and she spent a while getting out from under it — a foul-mouthed, worn-down thirty-year-old in the romantic comedy "Two Outs in the Ninth Inning" (2007), which suited the husky voice viewers had once complained about. "I've been told many times that my voice would be a detriment to my career," she said. "It was odd, because I thought of my husky voice as my biggest asset."

Film made her a lead. "A Family" (2004) brought Best New Actress at the Blue Dragon Awards; "Sunny" (2008), in which she plays a housewife who becomes a forces' singer to find the husband sent to Vietnam, won her Best Actress at the Daejong Film Awards and the Critics' Choice Awards — she drank most of a bottle of whisky on set after the director said she was not convincing enough. She played Empress Myeongseong in "The Sword with No Name" (2009), took Best Actress at the Blue Dragon Film Awards for "Midnight FM" (2010), and led "The Flu" (2013).

On television she was a double agent in "Athena: Goddess of War", a woman losing her memory to Alzheimer's in "A Thousand Days' Promise" (2011), which won her an Excellence Award at the SBS Drama Awards, and an unscrupulous woman set on becoming First Lady in "King of Ambition" (2013). In "Mask" (2015) she plays both a department store clerk buried in her father's debt and the heiress whose life she takes over; it won her Best Actress at the 28th Grimae Awards, which the broadcast directors themselves vote on. She says she is drawn to parts with an "iron fist in a velvet glove" about them — gentle-looking and immovable.