Asian-American actor goes from The Walking Dead to playing a Korean Gatsby
- Seoul-born actor, who grew up in the United States, had to learn his Korean lines for his role in Burning
- Yuen played Glenn Rhee in zombie horror series The Walking Dead for six years
Steven Yeun is a master at playing nice. But after six years portraying moral compass Glenn Rhee on AMC’s long-running The Walking Dead, the 34-year-old actor has embraced the opportunity to do something different.
“It’s cool to be able to graduate from a show and experience such as The Walking Dead and be able to constantly stretch myself and put myself to the test,” he says. “I just hope I can continue to do that.”
Yeun has found one of his meatiest roles to date with Burning, Lee Chang-dong’s haunting mystery drama and South Korea’s official foreign-language film entry for the Oscars. He plays Ben, a handsome and wealthy Gatsby type whose ceaseless pursuit of fun indicates a pervasive and gnawing ennui.
LA Times critic Justin Chang calls the film “a romantic triangle: a crime thriller, a dark comedy of class rage [and] a parable for a divided nation”.
“My character, he has a sense of emptiness about him, a sense of loneliness,” says Yeun. “Regardless of whether he has all the things that he needs in this material life, he’s clearly – or maybe not clearly – missing something.”
Ben seeks diversion in Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a firebrand whose dramatic highs and lows serve as a counterpoint to his calm remove. But he seems to get the biggest kick out of his encounters with Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), a farm boy and Hae-mi’s would-be paramour, the perfect foil to Ben’s polished wealth.