“Now I can act without pressure”

(image; Netflix) 

Han Hyo-joo, who started her acting career in 2005, made her first appearance in an teenage restricted film and drama this year. In Disney+'s Moving, she faced people with super natural powers from North Korea, saying, "To protect my child, I can become a monster at any time." In Believer 2, she shows a shocking performance in which she holds a knife and slices men's necks. While breaking the bias that she was specialized in melodramatic acting and daring to explore various genres, Han Hyo-joo has never lost her natural acting style. However, Han Hyo-joo's recent characters were the female pirate leader in The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure, a special agent in Treadstone, a mother of a high school student son and a former secret agent of the National Security Agency in Moving. In terms of appearance, Big Knife in Believer 2 heralds the most intense transformation in Han Hyo-joo's entire filmography. She is wearing large glasses, dentures, and displaying a body with minimal body fat, covered in all kind of scars. Han Hyo-joo laughed, saying, "It's been 18 years since my debut. Looking at the time I've spent on acting, it seems I've reached the age to play in adult-rated films."

Director Baek Jong-yeol and Yong Films, whom she had a good relationship with through The Beauty Inside, originally set the role of Big Knife as a man. However, with Han Hyo-joo's participation, the character's gender changed, and she actively participated in developing the character from the beginning. "Originally, it was a villain character without any convincing narrative or history. I wanted to show the narrative of why Big Knife became like this. The English title of this film is Believer, and wouldn't Big Knife also have to be a character with some blind belief? In that way, she could be more convincing.” " So, they created a narrative that Big Knife, who grew up in an orphanage, blindly fell in love with Professor Lee who chose to use her for his own purposes. “She shows a borderline personality disorder and only seeks his love. Big Knife just wanted to be Professor Lee’s daughter. In some ways, she is a pitiful woman who has never had what she wanted. I focused on creating the character in this aspect." Before the actual shooting, Han Hyo-joo devoted herself to constant efforts, waking up in the early morning for 2-3 hours of weight training, managing her diet, and then spending 2-3 hours on cardio exercise, and studying Chinese lines for an hour.

Just as Han Hyo-joo's early melodramatic acting evolved into Moving, the history of her genre films such as Cold Eyes and Treadstone continues with Believer 2. Moreover, her recent impressive choices are the result of “good timing rather than a calculation” and “persistent effort not to look back and regret after making a decision.” She said, "Accumulated experience and expertise cannot be ignored. I still cannot act with absolute confidence, but I have gained a sense of ease. In the past, I was afraid I wouldn't act well and was always nervous on set. These days, if this take was not good enough, I take it easy, thinking I can do better next time, and I am building relationships with people. Even on the set of Believer 2, I only took one or two takes. Now, I feel I can just act without pressure, which is great."

by Im Soo-yeon