A chameleon on screen and a fashion icon off, Doona Bae has steadily stacked her repertoire over the years, starting with her breakout role in the 2000 comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite, from Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho. Since then, Bae has starred in South Korean box office hits like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, The Host, The Kingdom, and she has worked across the globe, earning critical acclaim in projects like the Japanese offbeat romance Air Doll. She made her Hollywood debut in the big-budget 2012 sci-fi film Cloud Atlas. Her most recent venture, The Silent Sea, is about a crew of researchers who embark on a mission to the moon and co-stars Gong Yoo and Lee Joon.
Bae’s roles thus far have ranged from an inflatable doll who comes to life to an archer to a bounty hunter. She’s survived a monster terrorizing Seoul, traversed across time and space, and even tackled a Spanish-speaking role. Yet, her turn in The Silent Sea, as astrobiologist Song Jian, offered the actress something new. “Since it’s a story set in space, everything on set’s been formed by the imagination, so we’re all filming with a sense of wonder,” Bae shared during Netflix’s See What’s Next Korea virtual event.
The actor’s roles run the gamut both on- and off-screen. Bae has released a series of travel photography books: Doona’s London Play, Doona’s Tokyo Play and Doona’s Seoul Play. And in 2016, Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière, who first discovered the actor in another Bong-helmed film, The Host, appointed the multi-hyphenate star as an ambassador for the fashion house — a nod to her modeling roots.
Because Bae hasn’t let herself be pigeonholed into a certain type of role, trying to predict what’s next for the actor is nearly impossible. However, on Silent Sea co-star Lee Joon’s Young Street radio program, the actress revealed what draws her to certain projects: “After playing roles that require me to learn something, I’ve become addicted to it. If I’m told that I need to learn something, then it makes me want to do it more.” So far, Bae has picked up archery and table tennis and learned three new languages: English, Spanish and, most recently, French. But while her varied pursuits have put her in a league of her own, she still manages to be relatable. An avid wine collector, Bae lets viewers in on her last meal of choice — a liquid diet of sorts: “wine.”
