Kim Yoo-jung is one of the representative figures who are considered the “standard of revolution” among former child actors.
Born in 1999, Kim Yoo-jung debuted through a CF in 2003 when she was 5 years old, and has been working steadily for nearly 20 years until now at the age of 24.
The movie “Circle of Atonement” (directed by Park Eun-gyoung and Lee Dong-ha), which was released in 2015, was a film starring Kim Yoo-jung when she was 17 years old.
In “Circle of Atonement”, Kim Yoo-jung played Jang-hyun, the daughter of a murderer. Jang-hyun was a girl who became an adult early, holding her deep wounds in the wake of an incident 10 years ago that changed her life forever.
She had to digest the complex inner acting that went back and forth between opposite emotions, from compassion and anger towards her biological father, friendliness and hostility towards her stepfather Sang-won (Sung Dong-il), to sense of kinship and guilt towards her homeroom teacher Chul-woong (Son Ho-jun), who suddenly appeared one day.
Kim Yoo-jung, who delicately portrayed a mature girl hiding heavy secrets, skillfully led the mysterious story revolving around her.
Kim Yoo-jung, whom we met before the release of “Circle of Atonement” in 2015, talked about her busy daily life as she was both acting and studying as a freshman at high school back then.
Referring to the school situation during the exam period at that time, she said, “I couldn’t take the tests.” She revealed the hardships of her acting career, “I control my weight little by little to come out prettier on the screen. I eat a lot, but if I feel like I’ve gained weight, I’ll lose some weight.”
In particular, in “Circle of Atonement”, a younger counterpart of Kim Yoo-jung, who was a teenage child actress at that time, appeared.
Kim Yoo-jung said with a smile, “She was way too similar to me. However, she had her own vibe and I think it oddly suited the movie.”
She went on to say, “I didn’t even think about whether my character in the work would have a younger counterpart. I felt it more because many people told me that that child actress looked like me. I’m not out of child roles yet, so it’s just amazing that there’s a child actress who looks exactly like me. She was so good at acting. While watching the movie, I kept thinking, ‘She’s really pretty and she acts well.'”
Meanwhile, while mentioning Kim Yoo-jung’s old works, including “Moon Embracing the Sun” (2011) in which she played Han Ga-in’s younger counterpart, she smiled shyly, saying, “No, I can’t watch them.”
Source: daum
