Kim Ji Won in Cine21 Spread Expanding Her Acting Portfolio with New Detective K Movie

I’m ridiculously enamored of Kim Ji Won‘s green dress in this recent Cine21 pictorial shot in connection with promotions for the Joseon movie Detective K: Secret of the Living Dead. She’s the female lead in this supernatural-tinged detective movie opposite Kim Myung Min and Oh Dal Soo and it’s a great role for this talented and rising fast young actress to build her Chungmuro resume. The world is far bigger than the K-drama oyster and if she can transition to movies then doing dramas will be a nice break to maintain her popularity while cementing a spot among the more elite movie actresses.


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Kim Ji Won in Cine21 Spread Expanding Her Acting Portfolio with New Detective K Movie — 28 Comments

  1. She’s pretty no doubt about that. Fight My Way showed people that she is an actress (and no idol) who can act and people will gladly watch dramas where professional actors are in leading roles. She’s been so far quite wise with the choices of her roles. Now if she manages to succeed in films and truly get into the promising new comer in film category, it will do good for her career altogether. Typecasting is the thing she will want to avoid, which some actresses have been suffering from and the best way for them too is to alternate between movies and dramas. Unbelievable how a pretty and reasonably talented real actress got her first leading role much later than mediocre idol actresses like Suzy.

      • Does this site have a Suzy obsession??? She isn’t the only idol with bad acting and gets cast as female lead. There are plenty of others.

      • Suzy is just synonymous with repeatedly being rewarded for zero acting talent, no more and no less. Her fans’ persecution complex would have you believe she’s some poor put-upon damsel who has no choice about taking highly-paid acting jobs she’s incompetent at but I don’t buy it.

      • She is very popular on social media platforms though (and other female idols that gets cast as leads)

      • Social media followers don’t translate into ratings or any material benefit for idol dramas, I think people will learn that the hard way.

      • Ratings aren’t the only indicator people watch a Kdrama. Maybe, it is in South Korea but not in the international market. Imho, ratings means mature audiences watch the drama while social media platforms means younger audience watch it. At the end of the day, which one brings in more money is the deciding factor.

    • She’s not just pretty, she’s really striking – her features aren’t the kind people get from a plastic surgeon, but it just adds to ger distinctiveness.

      And I absolutely agree that it’s ridiculous that it took so long for an actress of her calibre to really become a leading lady, and she would have kept on getting overlooked if it wasn’t for KES and Descendants. There’s a whole generation of early 90s-born actresses who never got their break into public channel lead roles or got it very late because the networks were busy hiring crappy idols for female leads, hopefully that’s changing now.

      • @Royal We, You’re right. Even k-netz are saying this how 90s actresses aren’t getting the chances they deserve because crappy idol actresses keep getting leading roles.

        @Slim, I’m guessing it has got something to do with idol actresses’ agency power, popularity and the consequent PPL money.

        @Abc, Suzy popped into my mind because she is, after all, top excellence award winning actress, while some other actresses from no name agencies have to work their butts off for years to even get top excellence award, and the funny thing is that these actresses actually deserve their awards unlike Suzy. Imagine, Gong Hyo Jin got top excellence award for Jealousy Incarnate. How absurd is that to award a mediocrity with the same award as Gong Hyo Jin? There are others, such as Hyeri, but at least she didn’t win a top excellence award yet

      • @prettyautumn – exactly. Kdrama producers would keep saying ‘there are no good rookie actresses in their 20s’ a few years ago, but what they really meant was there was nobody famous enough so they kept hiring crappy idols (even though the dramas flopped anyway)…and how were girls like Kim Ji Won, Jung So Min supposed to become famous if they were constantly shut out of lead roles and not given any opportunities?

        I’m glad that THAAD at least forced drama producers to reconsider their blind reliance on fame being the only factor to consider when casting female leads. There are plenty of decent idol actors out there like Jung Eunji, Minah (Hyeri’s bandmate btw), there’s no need to keep hiring the crappy ones and putting out a worse product as a result.

  2. For me, her best role was in What’s up. I loved her so much in this drama. I’m not a big fan of Fight My Way, I was disapointed by the story and the characters.

    She was lovely in Goblin Night’s TV show and very cute with Lee Hong Ki 😀

    • She really is, and very versatile too. I can hardly believe it’s the same girl in What’s Up, Heirs and FMW, she has great range.

    • I thought she was deliberately faking it to seem off-putting and childish, at least that’s clear from the reactions in the scene. She wasn’t going for Park Bo Young-style natural aegyo at all.

    • The aeygo was definitely over the top on purpose and used for comical reasons. I don’t get aeygo at all and find it weird so I thought the way it was played in the drama, as a kind of confirmation that it is ridiculous, was fantastic.

  3. She’s been long overdue to move into lead roles ever since Heirs (she and Kim Woo Bin did an amazing job even though their characters were written to be unlikable, it’s just a shame she never got the boost she deserved from playing Rachel).

    I might hate Kim Eun Sook’s dramas but I like that she knows the power of her work and uses it to give good actors like Kim Ji Won a chance to shine like she did in Descendants, even when casting second leads. I hope Kim Ji Won now gets the lead roles and opportunities her talent deserves.

  4. KJW is 25, same age as Lee Se Young. I wish them both lots of opportunities as leads. They should be in place of Hyeri & Suzy who have ruined those few dramas due to poor acting…

    • Ugh.. so you want her to play a high schooler immature kid forever? Thank goodness she did not take that route. She is effin’ 26 years old, her roles have always been age appropriate. Besides, please define ’a lit bit old’. The only reason you remember only Rachel is because that’s probably the only drama beside DOTS you’ve seen of her. And she by the way totally overshadowed your supposed bias Park Shin Hye in Heirs. That’s not PSH’s fault however. It’s Kim Eun Sook who wrote such a dismal character to PSH. But PSH should finally start acting in dramas and take characters that suit her age which is 28 already. But of course PSH fans only want to see their bias in CHILDISH and juvenile dramas like Heirs and You Are Beautiful.

      • @Gee, geez I didn’t know how terrible and low Park Shin hye fans could get lolol. Anyway, let me tell you one thing. park Bo Young doe NOT play the ’same’ sassy girl with aegyo. She’s no Meryl Streep of kdramas (lmao? ’cause that’s a huge overstatement), but Park Bo Young in Werewolf Boy and Oh My Ghost are way too different to be categorized as similar types of characters. Oh and her performances in both works are natural and superior to PSH’s acting in Heirs, YAB and Heartstrings sorry not sorry. Second, when PSH was acting in as Lee Gyu Won in Heartstrings with that cardboard Jung Yonghwa to fulfill some shippers’ fantasies Shin Se Kyung was already acting with actors like Yoo Ah In and Lee Je Hoon. Although fashion King was a mess, at least there was no childish overacting or wide eyes kiss scenes. Also, Shin Se Kyung has acted in two excellent sageuk dramas and has played lighter rom-com too and she also has a coming of age movie under her belt. SSK’s acting is not as good as PSH’s though, but at least she has played more different characters in stead of playing the same pitiful always crying and wide eyes awkward high school girl, which her fans seem to love. I actually think PSH was good in Don’t Worry I’m a Ghost with Bong Tae Gyu and in Doctors with Kim Rae Won but PSH’s stupid fans keep calling those actors ugly, old and boring. some of her fans only want to ship her and only want to see her pay girl next door roles lmao.

  5. First saw KJW in the 2012 movie Horror Stories 1 with Yoo Yeon Seok she was just flipping great in that! And then again in DOTS so Yes please she needs more screen time and I’m not fussed over which actor though.

  6. I loved her Rachel in Heirs and went check out her other works too. She’s one of a few actresses i think have so much potential but without that star power and a strong backup agency. Still i’ll keep waiting for her projects, hopefully she’ll do a dark melo drama next time.

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