Lee Sun-kyun

Lee Sun-kyun (Korean: 이선균; March 2, 1975 – December 27, 2023) was a South Korean actor. Internationally, he was best known for his role in Bong Joon-ho's Academy Award–winning film Parasite (2019), for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award along with his castmates. He received several other awards, including a nomination for an International Emmy Award.

Lee debuted as an actor in 2000 and starred in TV dramas and musical theatre. The dramas Behind the White Tower and Coffee Prince (both 2007) brought Lee mainstream popularity, which he followed with Pasta (2010), Golden Time (2012), and My Mister (2018). On the big screen, he was known for his collaborations with director Hong Sang-soo in the arthouse films Oki's Movie (2010) and Nobody's Daughter Haewon (2013). His other high-profile films include mystery thriller Helpless (2012), romantic comedy All About My Wife (2012), and action thriller A Hard Day (2014), the latter of which won him the Baeksang Arts Award for Best Actor.

Following the success of Parasite, Lee continued to take on diverse and critically acclaimed roles. He starred in the first Apple TV+ Korean-language series, Dr. Brain (2021), the political drama Kingmaker (2022), the crime thriller Payback: Money and Power (2023), and the psychological thriller Sleep (2023). On December 27, 2023, Lee died from suicide at the age of 48. At the time of his death, Lee had been investigated for alleged drug consumption.

Lee Sun-kyun was born in Seoul on March 2, 1975. He attended the Korea National University of Arts in 1994, and graduated in the first ever class of its School of Drama with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Lee made his debut as the lead actor in the 2000 short film Psycho Drama. In 2001, he made his stage acting debut as Brad Majors in the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show, and his television debut in the sitcom Lovers.

Lee eventually achieved his breakthrough in 2007 with the critically lauded medical drama White Tower and the highly popular romantic series Coffee Prince. He was nominated for Best New Actor in Television during the 43rd Baeksang Arts Awards. Besides Coffee Prince, he worked with director Lee Yoon-jung two other times—in the sports-themed Taereung National Village in 2005, and in the slice-of-life drama Triple in 2009.

Despite his burgeoning fame, Lee then turned to low-budget arthouse films to polish his acting caliber. He appeared in films directed by Hong Sang-soo, such Night and Day, Lost in the Mountains, Oki's Movie, Nobody's Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi. Hong had been renowned for his realistic portrayal of ordinary lives in his films. Lee also headlined Paju, for which he won the Best Actor award at the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival held in Spain. Film distributor Myung Film quoted the judging committee as handing Lee high points for portraying the anguish his character felt for loving his wife's younger sister.

Lee successfully shook off his "gentle" TV drama image in Pasta, where he played a brilliant-but-abrasive chef. The series' popularity made him a bankable romantic leading man. Petty Romance reunited him with his My Sweet Seoul co-star Choi Kang-hee, and one-upmanship action comedy Officer of the Year (also known as Arrest King) soon followed.