Lee Mi-yeon raises thorny gender issue
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Lee Mi-yeon, right, and host Sohn Suk-hee from "Newsroom" on JTBC, Thursday
Actress Lee Mi-yeon has highlighted a gender issue that still plagues the acting industry.
Appearing on
JTBC’s “Newsroom” Thursday, Lee, 44, said she does not like the way Koreans often refer to actresses as “a female actor” while male actors are just “an actor.”
“While people want actresses to perform well, they also come up with a wistful idea that we should appear more glamorous than what our ages naturally define us as,” Lee said. “We want not to shy away from scenes with a moderate level of explicitness and at the same time be proud of how old we are. But it is not as easy as you think.”
Lee, third from right, with cast of movie "Like for Likes"
Lee, who stars in romantic-comedy movie “Like for Likes” that opened in theaters Wednesday, also said being a good person does not necessarily lead to being a good actor.
“You cannot be a good actor unless you are sensitive,” she said. “To go into the mind of a character you must be delicate, and you will be reflected to the others not so much as a nice person, either.”
The comment came when host Sohn Suk-hee mentioned an incident involving Lee and the 2001 TV drama “Empress Myeongseong” on KBS. Lee was the female lead but left the show after her contracted 100 episodes, even though producers wanted to make more. Lee claimed she was being unfairly treated by the producers because of her gender. Choi Myung-gil replaced her.
Lee from “Empress Myeongseong”(2001) on KBS / Korea Times file
The incident became a sensation, with Lee saying she “will not be such an easy person who is walked all over by the producers.”
Lee debuted in 1988 as a teenage actress and has won Best Actress awards from the nation’s prestigious Blue Dragon Film Awards and Grand Bell Awards.