Jung Ho-yeon, the muse of Chanel, Louis Vuitton and more adds acting to her resume.


Last year, model Jung Ho-yeon (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/hoooooyeony/?hl=en">@hoooooyeony</a>)&nbsp;traded her signature long, flaming red hair for a fluffy mid-length cut, and that&rsquo;s her transformation for Sae-byeok, her acting debut role in Netflix&rsquo;s Squid Game (오징어게임).

&ldquo;I knew that she&rsquo;s going to play Sae-byeok as soon as I watched her audition tape,&rdquo; said director Hwang Dong-hyuk. &ldquo;Her tone, her glare and her aura make her the Sae-byeok we&rsquo;re looking for.&rdquo;

In Squid Game, innocent childhood games turn into bloody games of survival as a group of people whose&nbsp;life is on the verge of collapsing are assembled at a mystery place to win a huge sum of money. Jung Ho-yeon&rsquo;s Kang Sae-byeok, one of the players in the game,&nbsp;is a character of paradox. Like other players, Sae-byeok is not afraid to put her life on the line to win, she has her own rules for living yet she also has a soft spot in her heart. Her identity as a North Korean defector&nbsp;also offers a different tone in this brilliant metaphor of the capitalist world we&rsquo;re living in.

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&ldquo;Sae-byeok is always crouching,&rdquo; says Jung Ho-yeon when asked if she could think of a pose that speaks to her character the most,&nbsp;striking&nbsp;a pose with her elbows resting on her knees, ten fingers clasped, and glares straight into the camera.

Jung Ho-yeon&rsquo;s modelling career officially took off when she participated in the fourth season of Korea&rsquo;s Next Top Model. In 2016, she joins Park Soo-joo and other models &nbsp;in survival audition program Devil&rsquo;s Runway as the contestants&rsquo; mentor, once again catching attentions to her exuberance and charismatic body language. Following her breakout in Korean fashion industry, she takes the global fashion week runways by storm.

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Here, Jung Ho-yeon shares more on her acting debut in Netflix&#39;s Squid Game:

ON GETTING THE ROLE

I was in New York preparing for fashion week when I received a call from my agency asking me to film an audition tape. I have been putting a lot of effort and energy in practising acting and I was really excited when director Hwang said he wanted to meet me in person after he watched my audition tape, so I packed my stuff, flew back to Korea straight from my NYFW schedule. I took the job.

When I first received the script, I read it all in one sitting. I just stayed up all night reading it. That&rsquo;s how awesome the story is. I have been a fan of director Hwang&rsquo;s previous works as well so I was really excited to be part of this production.

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ON YOUR CHARACTER

Sae-byeok pickpockets for a living and she has this dream to reunite with her family. That&rsquo;s why she joins the game without hesitation. She is a North Korean defector and I&rsquo;ve learned North Korean dialect during my preparation for the role. I can still remember my first line on the first day of filming, which was &ldquo;Why? I thought you wanted the ice-cream.&rdquo; [giggles]&nbsp;That&rsquo;s the line I remember the most.

ON THE STORY

I was so awestruck by set design, especially the dormitory set. I remember actor Oh Young-soo, who plays Il-nam in the series, said that the set reminded him of the Colosseum and I was feeling that too. It was so grand in scale, fascinating, and it has some eeriness to it.

To me, I think it&rsquo;s not about the money or prize. The experience of putting your life at risk is just not comparable to anything else.&nbsp;[thinks] Lee Jung-jae&#39;s&nbsp;Ki-hun is actually my favourite character in the story. I find the changes he goes through in the series is really fascinating and you will understand what I mean when you watch it!

Watch&nbsp;Squid Game&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.netflix.com/" target="_blank">netflix.com</a><a href="http://netflix.com./">.</a>

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Model Jung Ho-yeon on her acting debut in Netflix's Squid Game

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