INTERVIEW 'Models are born, actresses are made'
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A fashion model and actress Lee Ho-jung / Courtesy of YG KPLUS Management
By Kim Jae-heun
Model and actress Lee Ho-jung is only 21 years old, but she is already an overachiever.
Lee debuted when she was 16, walked on top-notch designers’ catwalks like Ko Tae-yong’s Beyond Closet and Hong Hye-jin’s The Studio K at Seoul Fashion Week. It has only been a year since she started acting field and has already starred in two TV dramas and two films including the recent hit “Midnight Runners” along with rising stars Park Seo-joon and Kang Ha-neul.
Although she only recently began acting, Lee has enough experience define herself as an actor. She says a model is born while an actor is made.
“I think models are born 100 percent but actors are made,” Lee said during an interview with The Korea Times at the YG KPLUS building in Gangnam, Seoul, on Aug. 3. “The two jobs are similar in that you live in the public eye but being a model requires quick concentration while actors have to think about lines, their fellow actors and work with many staff members on the spot.”
When she watched the cable TV show “Korea’s Next Top Model” five years ago, Lee said she had a gut feeling that she would become a fashion model. She was only an eighth grader at that time and she was not tall enough to become a high-end runway model. But Lee said she thought she could pose and express the designs well in those products.
“I saw one of the competitors who was only one year older than I and I thought I could do better. I’ve always loved fashion and have dressed well. I’d reform the design of my dresses and sell them at second-hand online stores and buy new clothes when I earned money,” said Lee.
A fashion model Lee Ho-jung debuted through CeCi Magazine's pictorial in 2012. / Courtesy of CeCi
Being 170 centimeters tall and 48 kilograms, Lee debuted as an ebullient young model, who refused to stand lifelessly in front of one of the best local photographers at the time, Hong Jang-hyun. A fashion magazine editor recommended Lee to a veteran female model for CeCi’s pictorial and only one would make the page.
Hong was skeptical about casting a young anonymous model until she started shooting pictures of the young, fresh and bright Lee.
Lee became a rare model to appear in both high-end fashion and teen girls’ magazines for her unique and cute face. Of course, Hong played big part in pushing Lee to digest two different roles.
“To be honest, I don’t recall being satisfied with all my work. When I look back on some of the photos I shot in the past, I feel embarrassed but they all received so much love. I don’t diet. I don’t gain weight easily in the first place, but I calculate the calories I eat. Modeling is a vocation for me,” said Lee.
Lee did not want to become an actor in the first place. She very much loved her job as a fashion model and she denied taking acting lessons her company recommended she take. Lee hated rehearsing and skipped classes often.
“I had no passion and my acting skill never improved. But one day that I watched the film Magic in the Moonlight by Woody Allen, and I wanted to live as a character in that movie. At that point I got interested in acting,” said Lee.
It has only been a little over a year and Lee feels tentative about talking about acting as she just made her debut. She feels nervous every times she stands up to act with veteran actors and she used to worry about people considering her as a stereotype of the model-turned-actor. Many in the audience look at Lee as an unskilled actor and her image overlaps with other models-turned-actors like Jang Yoon-ju or Lee Sung-kyoung.
“I don’t mind that. We all play different characters as actresses and I am more excited about my upcoming career since I just started.
“I am more worried about my career as a fashion model. I am happiest when I am modeling and it is my dream to walk on European runways. My dream stage is a Chanel show. For now, it is impossible to hold down two jobs, so I have concluded that I will go to Hollywood in the future and seek my dream as a Chanel model when I became successful there,” said Lee.