Actor Moon Chae-won said her acting with her school-day favorite Kwon Sang Woo created a synergy.
On the 9th, at a café in Palpan-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, an interview with actor Moon Chae-won for the film "Heartman" (director Choi Won-seop, distributed by Lotte Entertainment, produced by Movierock·Like M Company) was held.
The film "Heartman" is a comedy about Seung-min (Kwon Sang Woo), a man who returns and struggles to hold on to his first love when he meets her again, but a secret he can never tell her emerges, and it opens on the 14th. In the film, Moon Chae-won plays Bona, who has grown from Seung-min's (Kwon Sang Woo) legendary first love into a professional photographer and is more mature.
At the "Heartman" press screening and press conference held the previous day, Moon Chae-won said, "Actually, I had unconsciously always wanted to play a first-love character. I once had an opportunity to take such a role but couldn't because of personal reasons. So I always wanted to try again someday, and I was really happy to be able to do it in this film."
Maybe female actors have a romance or longing for the "first-love character." Moon Chae-won said, "This time I had time to think about it. I didn't usually say I wanted to play a first love, but when the opportunity came it felt good, and seeing the result made me realize it was probably embedded in me. It's not simply about looking pretty; you also have to act youthful, and I don't think I've had many roles that required playing that freshness."
She added, "In that sense it feels a bit late, very late. The good time has passed, and the time when I myself was fresh has passed, so meeting it late, I was still lucky. I'm glad they helped me look that way. I want to try many different kinds of projects."
In particular, regarding her feelings about acting with Kwon Sang Woo, who was her school-day favorite, Moon Chae-won said, "I think every actor probably has someone they want to act with. I, too, had my fantasy since 'Stairway to Heaven.' But when you meet the real person, he is senior Kwon Sang Woo, so even with those differences, I think it clearly creates synergy."
She said, "When you're attracted to someone, your eyes go to them, and if I had switched roles with Senior Sang Woo and played a divorced woman who had never married but liked a man, I think I wouldn't have acted as well as Senior Sang Woo. So I feel I was cast in a role that fit me, and thinking about Senior Sang Woo's comedy, his natural acting, and his sense of rhythm, I felt a lot of craft from him that hits the audience's laughs. At the technical screening only we saw it, so there wasn't that reaction, but I felt his contribution was enormous."
When asked whether the image she had imagined of Kwon Sang Woo when they first met differed from reality, Moon Chae-won said, "First, his appearance was exactly as I had imagined, and when we met at a restaurant his visuals were exactly what I expected. Unlike his shy image in A Bloody Aria, I felt he was more forceful. A 'teteo-nam'? I don't know the exact definition, but he has a lot of toughness."
Moon Chae-won said, "So when he performs action, it's not just that his body is well conditioned; there's a masculinity that comes from within. When I watched on the big screen, I remember A Bloody Aria from his late 20s, and that masculinity came through. I thought how someone lives and thinks shows a lot on the big screen."
Meanwhile, "Heartman" opens on Jan. 14 as the first comedy of the new year.
[Photo] Provided by Lotte Entertainment
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