‘Is there a grandmother role who changes bad people?’

“If you're going to write my age, say I am thousands of years old."

This is what actress Kim Hye-ja says when she meets reporters. When she gets a role, she becomes "that person" as if she has been living the life of the role for her whole life.

Kim, an actress who debuted as the first KBS actor in 1961, has been actively performing in dramas and movies for more than 60 years. She starred in "Country Diaries” (1980-2002), "Mom's Dead Upset " (2008), and "Mother" (2009).

This book, released 18 years after the book "Don't even Hit by Flowers" (2004), contains her confession about her acting life. The book was drafted by an editor who wrote it after interviewing the actress and going through her diaries and previous interviews. And then it was completed by her revision.

The first stage the author remembers was when she was six years old. In the play "The Altar of Life," performed by Yonsei University's medical students at the time, she played the role of a child, Hye-ja, who died after being bitten by a dog. Since then, the names of the roles played by the author in the dramas "I Live in Cheongdam-dong" and "The Light in Your Eyes" were all Hye-ja. The author tells this story and says, "acting was me, and I was acting."

What are the criteria for selecting works by the veteran actor? "No matter how much the role suffers due to the shackles of life, whether I see even a glimmer of hope is important.” She said, "Even if the role wanders at the bottom of her life, I look if there is hope or if there is a place that I can play hope as the character. I tried to find the story of tomorrow and act."

She overcomes difficulties by jumping into work whenever she struggles in real life. "I think God instilled a talent in every human being so that they can go through a hard and painful life with it." The role she wants to play before she dies is a "grandmother who changes bad people." Isn't it something a person who believes in the power of people, the world, and love can say?


beborn@donga.com