Gong Yoo at 41: from coronavirus aid to his Netflix debut, 4 things you didn’t know about the South Korean heartthrob ageing like a fine wine
Goblin, Coffee Prince, The Suspect, Silenced, Train to Busan, Kim Ji-young: Born 1982 ... the assured range of Gong Yoo continues to astound well into his fifth decade – but what else is there to know about the actor set to make his Netflix Originals debut in The Sea of Tranquility?
He almost didn’t appear in Guardian: The Lonely and Great God – the K-drama that made his name
Who can imagine the soft charismatic guardian not being Gong Yoo? Well the screenwriter Kim Eun-sook thought the same. In what is now quite a famous story, Gong rejected the drama (widely known as Goblin) for five years – unimaginable considering how many actors were desperate to work with Kim after she wrote successful pieces such as Descendants of the Sun and Secret Garden. Eventually Gong saw sense, explaining that at one point he felt scared of acting in dramas.
He wasn’t acting in the Train to Busan … because he was really scared
In an interview with Hankook Ilbo, Gong explained that he gets frightened easily, and cannot even go in the ghost house in theme parks. While filming the movie Train to Busan, he admitted that he was scared of the zombies – for real. He once shared a story of how he freaked out when the actors playing the zombies didn’t hear the director’s call, and continued attacking him after the cameras stopped rolling. No wonder those scenes felt extra real! Also, at the time in 2015, Korea was going through the Mers virus and so all the crew had to wear masks while filming. “I was really afraid then,” Gong Yoo said.
He donated 100 million won for coronavirus relief