Cannes 2022: how Korean star Lee Jung-jae of Squid Game fame made his film directing debut with 1980s-set espionage thriller Hunt
- Lee, who started out as a fashion model, and starred in Squid Game, has directed his first film which he presented at Cannes
- He talks about the global success of Korean cinema and television, and writing Hunt while Squid Game was being filmed
After nearly 30 years acting, Lee Jung-jae is used to being approached by devotees of his work. But recently he was in a restaurant in his native South Korea when a man a few years his senior went up to him as he was about to leave.
“Usually my fans are much younger than me,” Lee says in an interview with the South China Morning Post this week. “He told me he was in his mid-50s, and he said, ‘I’m becoming more hopeful. I’m getting older but you can always have success later in your life. You’re giving me a lot of courage to live a better life.’”
Lee, who turns 50 in December, is living proof of that. Despite a career that began as a fashion model, before he transitioned to television and film, the last year has seen Lee move to another level.
We’re meeting in a quiet studio space, just off the Rue d’Antibes in Cannes, France, where Lee – dressed in a sharp navy suit and white shirt with metallic collar studs – has just been posing for photographs. All part of an average day’s work for a hot debutant director at the Cannes Film Festival.