Yoo Teo plays Paralympic snowboarder in rom-com 'New Year Blues'

Actor Yoo Teo / Courtesy of Acemaker Movieworks

By Kwak Yeon-soo

Actor Yoo Teo said his own experience recovering from a sports injury helped him get into character for “New Year Blues.” In the upcoming romantic comedy, Yoo plays Paralympic snowboarder Rae-hwan who is about to marry Oh-wol (Choi Soo-young of Girls' Generation) his girlfriend of seven years.

“From ages 12 through 20, I played basketball. I was serious about becoming a professional basketball player and I was scouted by several teams. But I suffered cruciate ligament injuries twice and ruptured my Achilles tendon. When I was 17, my doctor told me that I'd be lucky if I could walk comfortably. I walked on crutches for six months,” he said during an interview with The Korea Times held Wednesday via Google Meet.

“Of course I don't know what it's like to lose a limb in an accident, but I used my personal experience to understand how Rae-hwan grows from his pain.”

Helmed by Hong Ji-young, the director behind “Marriage Blue” (2013) and “Will You Be There?” (2016), “New Year Blues” revolves around the lives of four couples who break up or fall in love on New Year's Eve.

Apart from Yoo and Choi, the film's star-studded cast includes Kim Kang-woo, Yoo In-na, Yoo Yeon-seok, Lee Yeon-hee, Lee Dong-hwi, Chen Du Ling and Yeom Hye-ran.

Born and raised in Cologne, Germany, Yoo moved to the United States when he turned 20 to study acting at the highly regarded Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. He later took an intensive course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in the United Kingdom and performed in theater productions in Germany. In 2009, Yoo moved to Korea to pursue acting.

He rose to stardom in 2018 after being invited to Cannes International Film Festival for his role in Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov's “Leto,” a film about the singer and his relationship with fellow musician Mike Naoumenko. He played Soviet rock legend Viktor Tsoi, a Russian of Korean descent who died in a tragic car accident in 1990.

The 41-year-old actor confessed that his strategy after Cannes was to play a lot of villain characters before pulling off a total transformation.

“After Cannes, I made a promise to my agency that as long as I'm in good health and time allows me, I'll appear in as many projects as possible. I initially played bad guys, but about a year and a half later, I started to receive protagonist roles with commercial appeal,” he said.

Yoo shared that the major difference between being an obscure actor and a famous one is that he's able to show off his real personality on film sets.

“I'm the type of person who doesn't communicate based on Korea's strict hierarchical social structure. For me, a person's age, job or status doesn't matter so much. That's why I had some misunderstandings in the past. But now, people see me for who I am and get that I act in a certain way with no bad intentions,” he said.

The actor said his ultimate dream is to be a “world-famous actor.”

“I believe that I have indie sensibilities as well as commercial sense. Growing up with different cultures, I can tell stories in a way that's palatable for Korean and Western audiences,” he said.

“I hope this film becomes the rom-com of the holiday season and brings a wave of nostalgia to the audience.”

“New Year Blues” will hit local theaters, Feb. 10.