Kim Hye Yoon Shares Stories Of Her Past Struggles As An Unknown Actress: Endless Auditions, Profanity On Set And More

Actress Kim Hye Yoon confessed the sorrow and hardships she endured during seven years of obscurity.

On the most recent episode of tvN’s “You Quiz on the Block,” trusted rising actress Kim Hye Yoon was featured.

On the show, Kim Hye Yoon shared that after enrolling in an acting academy as a high school student, she debuted as a child actress just nine months later through the morning drama “TV Novel Samsaengi.” She said, “When I went to the set, it suddenly became completely quiet at the timing of my lines. It was so scary that I got extremely nervous. So I didn’t act during the full shot. I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

When she said she didn’t know because no one had told her, Yoo Jae Suk comforted her, saying, “These terms are really difficult. When someone says, ‘We’ll take a bust shot,’ you wonder what that even means. When they say, ‘Support this here,’ you’re like, ‘What am I supporting?’ There are a lot of on-set terms. For a high school student with no social experience, even the term ‘full shot’ itself must have been difficult.”

Yoo Jae Suk then added, “I heard you were told things like, ‘What’s the use of good pronunciation if you can’t act properly?’ and ‘That’s why you’re an amateur.’ Later on, after being scolded so much, you managed to hold on mentally by telling yourself, ‘At least it’s a relief that they say my pronunciation is good.’”

Kim Hye Yoon responded with a smile, “If you really think about it, it was true. I was an amateur. If I let myself feel too discouraged, I became even more intimidated on set and felt like I couldn’t do what I needed to do.” She also revealed that she had taken over 100 auditions, saying, “When it was really busy, I even did three in one day. I failed so often that I went thinking, ‘I’m going again today just to get rejected.’”

In a follow-up interview with the production team, Kim Hye Yoon recalled, “At every audition, I was often told I was too short. At the time, I had a complex about my height. It wasn’t a role that suited me, but because I wanted to pass, I said a lot of things to embellish myself. My height is 158 cm, but I said it was 160 cm. Everyone knew and it got exposed—I just added about 2 cm.”

She continued, “There were many kinds of scoldings. Some of them can’t even be aired. I heard a lot of profanity on set. Whenever something upsetting happened, I cried every day on the way home in the car. I cried a lot on public transportation too.”

Kim Hye Yoon appeared in more than 50 works in minor roles over seven years. When Yoo Jae Suk said, “That’s not easy to endure,” she replied, “It felt overwhelming. I wondered if I was doing well, and juggling it with school was really hard. When a script came out, the first thing I did was look for my name.”

She added, “(While reading the script) I’d think, ‘Am I going abroad?’ There are signs starting the week before. A character who was bad suddenly does good things, or it feels like they’re wrapping things up. They feel guilt or suddenly go around saying goodbye,” drawing laughter.

Speaking to the production team, Kim Hye Yoon said, “While waiting, I wished I had a name too. My roles lasted just one day of filming. Often only my back was shown, or roles that only my mom could recognize as I passed by. There was even ‘High School Girl 1.’ But honestly, ‘High School Girl 1’ isn’t easy, because number one has the most lines. If you were number two or three, you’d envy number one.”

During that time, she was not signed to an agency. Kim Hye Yoon said, “I joined my first agency after ‘Sky Castle’ ended. I went to sets alone using public transportation. I had to prepare my own outfits, so I carried several bags and rode the subway by myself,” adding, “If the location was deep in the mountains, I asked my father. When he went to work, I rode along with the supporting actors’ vehicle.”

To catch the supporting actors’ bus departing from Yeouido, she had to pack her clothes and wait at a 24-hour café. Even after arriving on set, there were times she waited nine hours without being called. She said, “It was an endless wait,” and added, “On cold days, when they offered hot packs or heaters, I thought I didn’t deserve them and said, ‘I’m okay.’ When I was in high school, I got frostbite on my fingers. My hands swelled up and my fingernails fell off. It was that cold, but I just let it go.”

Source: (A)