Cha In-pyo, speaking candidly for the first time about the panic disorder he experienced while working as an actor, recalled the time saying "I even thought about death."
Actor Cha In-pyo openly discussed important moments in his life, from growing up without being compared within his family to his first panic attack on a plane and his feelings for his mother and his wife, Shin Ae-ra.
On the 21st, Cha In-pyo, who appeared on the YouTube channel Shinaelife's interview segment "Your Life," said he grew up between an older brother and a younger sibling who were good at studying but was never compared by his parents. He recalled, "My brother and my younger sibling were good at studying, so why are you so bad? They never compared me like that," and said that although he was compared with his brother at school, at home his mother told him, "You are different," and "But you're good at basketball," he recalled.
Shin Ae-ra also said, "Comparison is really a bad thing. A child loses places to go; if it happens even at home," adding, "Home must be the last stronghold for children."
Cha In-pyo also revealed the moment he first experienced a panic attack several years ago on a plane heading to Istanbul for a documentary shoot. While reading the script on the plane, he said he suddenly felt "as if I were drowning, unable to breathe and feeling like water was filling up," and added, "It was so suffocating as if I had to take my eyes out to survive. It felt like all the organs of my body had to get out of this prison called Cha In-pyo for me to live."
When he realized he could not get off the plane, he said, "My bank account balance, our house, my beloved wife, my family—all of them could not help at all," and recalled thinking, "This must be the feeling a person has when they die. I will completely go alone, left behind." About 30 minutes later the symptoms subsided, but afterward he found it difficult to fly alone, and he said he is gradually overcoming it, noting, "On long trips, if I go with my wife, she acts as my sedative."
Looking at a photo of himself as a child in his mother's arms, he recalled his mother's life after losing her parents at 15 and living alone. Cha In-pyo said that while helping his elderly mother with farm work, he thought, "I am my mother's guardian angel. Until she passes away, that is my very honorable duty."
Recalling his guardian angel, he looked at Shin Ae-ra and said, "In less than a second of thinking, it was you." He confessed, "By meeting you, I went to places I wouldn't have gone and met people I wouldn't have met," and said, "Thanks to you, I was able to hold two daughters I could not have embraced, and I was able to live a very different life. I thought Shin Ae-ra was my guardian angel."
Cha In-pyo said he would like to tell his mother in her final moments, "It was truly an honor for me to serve you this way," and said that caring for a loved one until the end is also "a very precious moment."
The conversation continued with talk about the play he is currently appearing in, Dead Poets Society. Cha In-pyo said he was especially struck by the line, "Most people live quietly in despair and enter their graves without even uttering a single line of the song they hold in their hearts." Shin Ae-ra said that even a story you already know feels different when you look into each other's eyes and listen, and added, "If you focus on and listen to that person, that is the most meaningful thing a person can do for another person."
Asked if he would want to marry Shin Ae-ra again if he were reborn, Cha In-pyo laughed, saying, "I don't believe in being reborn," then added, "If I were reborn and married again, I would want to marry my wife. Because what good is marrying someone else?" At the end of the interview he told Shin Ae-ra, "I always saw your profile; seeing your front side was so nice."
Meanwhile, Cha In-pyo and Shin Ae-ra met and became lovers through the MBC drama drama Love in Your Arms, and married in 1995. They had their first son in 1998, and later attracted much attention by publicly adopting two daughters born in 2005 and 2008. Their eldest son, Cha Jeong-min, who was active as a singer, held a wedding last year at a location in Seoul.
[Photo] Shinaelife YouTube capture, SNS
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