An Interview With: Kong Hyo-Jin, Korean Actress
By Michelle Geslani for Asians in America magazine | July 1 2009
Kong Hyo-Jin is a force to be reckoned with. Although having been in the film industry for more than 10 years now, the Korean actress is never at a loss for reinventing those characters she portrays. Last week at the New York Asian Film Festival, audiences embraced both screenings of the movie Crush and Blush, in which Hyo-Jin played the leading role.
As a crazed, awkward, and often ostracized teacher named Me-Sook, Hyo-Jin accomplished the difficult task of not only mastering the character’s maniacal tendencies, but also enabling her to be felt sorry for and pitied (especially when she blushed beet-red) because of her vulnerability. Hyo-Jin made the story of a woman’s obsessive mission to woo her crush feel just as poignant as it was insane.
Her work in the film has been widely recognized and praised. She was the first female recipient of the Rising Star Asia Awards presented by Subway Cinema and The Hollywood Reporter. I had the privilege of speaking with her about her performance in Crush and Blush.
AIA: What initially drew you to this film?
Kong Hyo-Jin: The character she played has a very strong and sometimes frightening personality, but at the same time she’s a very likeable dimension so I had to figure out a way to make audiences like her and even root for her. So that was sort of my task in this film, that’s what weighed on my mind a lot. But I knew I wanted to help the character achieve this. After a lot of thought, I decided I wanted to take on the challenge.
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