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| From left, actors Gang Mal-geum, Jung Soo-jung and Jang Hye-jin pose during a press conference for the film "More than Family" in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap |
By Kwak Yeon-soo
After a decade in the public eye thanks to her successful music career as a K-pop idol, Jung Soo-jung (a.k.a. Krystal) is betting big on her acting career with her first lead movie role in the comedy drama "More than Family."
In the film, Jung plays To-il, a pregnant college student who heads out on a mission to find her birth father Hwan-gyu (played by Lee Hae-young), whom she hasn't heard from for more than a decade, before her wedding.
Once she tracks down her birth father, To-il faces another challenge: her soon-to-be-husband Ho-hoon (Shin Jae-hwi), who is still a high school student, goes completely off the grid. So she wanders from place to place with her family to find him.
"When I first heard the role would be a pregnant woman, I sighed deeply," Jung said during a press conference held in Seoul, Tuesday. "But I read the script in one sitting and was really drawn to it. So I decided to take on the role of To-il."
Jung explained that To-il represents women these days. "To-il is always confident in her beliefs and really cool. I was able to relate to her," she said.
On transforming from a K-pop icon to an actor, she said she stopped losing weight in order to look like a woman who is five months pregnant.
"When I first met with director Choi Ha-na, she looked at me and said I was too skinny for the role. So I started gaining weight to look like a pregnant woman," Jung said.
"Parasite" actor Jang Hye-jin, who plays her mother, Sun-myung, in the film, lauded Jung for her audacity and good manners on set.
"Soo-jung is adventurous and audacious, but polite at the same time. Her attitude was like 'It sounds difficult, but I'll give it a try,'" she said. "We became close like a real mom and daughter. We actually live very close to each other, so I'm looking forward to taking a walk and drinking coffee with her in our neighborhood."
Choi revealed that she wanted to reduce the stigma against single parents, divorce and premarital pregnancy through her debut feature.
"Although we see a growing number of such cases, people still view them as strange and hard to understand. However, I think disrupted families are a part of how we live," Choi said.
"I hope this film will make people feel open-minded toward accepting family problems and diverse family structures. I hope that they gain the courage to get a hold of their own life, just like To-il approaches it in a simple way."
This year Krystal left SM Entertainment in favor of H& Entertainment, and is continuing to put more energy toward acting in film and on TV. She has appeared in hit TV series including, "The Heirs," "The Bride of Habaek" and "Prison Playbook."
"More than Family," which was invited to this year's Busan International Film Festival, will hit local theaters Nov. 12.
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