SEOUL — From Hollywood blockbusters to Squid Game, Lee Byung-hun has spent decades moving between heroes and villains, Korean cinema and international productions. Now, as Korean stories reach an increasingly global audience, the veteran actor is reflecting on something far more personal: the uncertainty of staying relevant in an industry that never stops changing.
In a recent interview with The Korea Times, Lee discussed his latest film, “No Other Choice,” his approach to difficult characters, the worldwide rise of Korean culture and the anxiety that can exist behind an apparently successful career.
Lee Sees a Changing World in “No Other Choice”
In No Other Choice, Lee plays Man-su, an ordinary paper-industry worker whose career is threatened as his industry disappears.
Lee compared the character’s situation to the world of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, where an ordinary worker struggles to keep pace with an increasingly mechanized society.
The film takes that anxiety into the present, with Man-su eventually confronting an AI-driven system that he cannot adapt to.
For Lee, that theme extends beyond the character.
He said the film industry itself is facing a similar period of transformation as audiences, technology and the ways people consume stories continue to change.
The Character That Stayed With Him
Lee said two job-interview scenes particularly stood out during production.
The first and final interviews present almost opposite versions of Man-su. Internally, he is overwhelmed by fear and desperation, while externally he tries to appear calm and confident.
But what affected Lee most was not watching an extraordinary person become dangerous.
It was watching an ordinary, decent person gradually convince himself that he could do things he once considered impossible.
That transformation, Lee said, creates a more unsettling form of empathy because audiences can recognize emotions such as fear and desperation in themselves.
He Doesn’t Need to Become a Villain to Play One
Lee has built a career playing characters on very different sides of the moral spectrum.
From I Saw the Devil to Squid Game and more recent projects, he has repeatedly taken on complicated roles.
But he says actors do not necessarily need to experience everything their characters experience.
Instead, he draws on emotions that are familiar to him — including fear, anxiety and desperation — and intensifies them for the role.
That approach allows him to portray extreme characters without personally experiencing the situations depicted on screen.
His Son Has Started Seeing a Different Side of Him
Lee also shared a lighter glimpse of his life away from the camera.
His son is now old enough to watch some of his work, including his role in “KPop Demon Hunters.”
At one point, his son questioned why his father behaved so badly in the story.
Lee joked that, because he has recently been playing more villains, his son might eventually start wondering whether his father is a professional villain.
The moment illustrates the unusual gap between an actor’s public roles and the person audiences encounter away from the screen.
From Seoul to Hollywood — and Back Again
Lee’s career stretches across Korean television, cinema and Hollywood.
He began acting professionally in the early 1990s and later became internationally recognized through films including Joint Security Area, A Bittersweet Life, The Good, the Bad, the Weird and I Saw the Devil. His Hollywood credits include G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Red 2, Terminator: Genisys and The Magnificent Seven.
His global profile expanded further through “Squid Game,” adding another major international chapter to a career that had already crossed national and genre boundaries.
Lee now says the worldwide reach of Korean culture feels substantially different from earlier periods of international promotion.
He described the scale of Korean content’s global popularity as gratifying, while also acknowledging that such attention can feel overwhelming.
The Anxiety Behind the Success
Despite his achievements, Lee revealed that uncertainty has not disappeared.
He said he sometimes wonders how long audiences will continue wanting to see him on screen and how long he can remain relevant as an actor.
That concern adds another layer to his role in No Other Choice, a film centered on a person confronting a rapidly changing world and questioning where he fits within it.
Lee’s career has repeatedly crossed boundaries — between Korea and Hollywood, heroes and villains, mainstream success and more challenging roles.
Now, his latest work places him inside another boundary that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: the line between human work and a future increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
WWC ONE MEDIA G,A
