Song Kang-ho, Kim Min-hee on NYT ‘Greatest actors’

Song Kang-ho and Kim Min-hee are the 6th and the 16th, respectively, on The New York Times’ list of “the 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century” curated by film critics Manohla Dargis and Anthony Oliver Scott.

“The Korean actor Song Kang Ho probably first came to the attention of most American audiences in the 2020 best-picture Oscar winner, ‘Parasite,’ playing an impoverished, conniving patriarch,” said the news paper in the introduction. “He’s like a canvas that grows and grows,” said Parasite Director Bong Joon-ho speaking to The New York Times. “No matter how many brush strokes I apply, there’s always more space to paint. To me, he’s like an inexhaustible diamond Introducing Kim Min-hee,

The New York Times says her “exquisitely nuanced performance is at the center” of Hong Sang-soo’s “Right Now, Wrong Then” (2015). It also said she “alternately hides her character’s feelings and lets them run amok” in Park Chan-wook’s “The Handmaiden”, adding that “Her body rocks and her face distorts as fear and pain give way to ecstasy and release. The character is a mystery that the movie teases but that Kim deliriously unlocks.”

American actor Denzel Washington was the first on the list, while French actress Isabelle Huppert came in the second.


hoho@donga.com