Korean actress Park Shin Hye looks forward to more challenging roles

SINGAPORE — For most of her acting career, South Korean actress Park Shin Hye has played multiple roles, but most have depicted her as the sweet girl-next-door.

Her next project is set to change that.

In the upcoming drama thriller Heart Blackened, the 27-year-old said she will play a lawyer hired to defend a rich man’s daughter suspected of murdering the woman who was about to be her step-mother.

“For my past projects, I think most of them were focused on the chemistry or the relationship between man and woman, so it was more about relationship-based stories,” said Park, who was in town on Friday (July 21) to launch the floral beauty brand Mamonde in Singapore.

The actress said filming the movie was “very challenging”. “What the director wanted me to portray was not (the) usual Park Shin Hye that audiences expect, but a new Park Shin Hye that also aligns with the role, the character that I’m playing,” Park said.

To help her in the role, director Jung Ji-woo told her she needed to pay closer attention to her every slight movement and facial expression, which she found “unfamiliar” and “challenging to adapt to”.

Park shared that it took her about 15 takes to complete a “simple scene”, a far cry from the two to three takes she usually takes to complete a scene in a drama series.

“I don’t know how well the audience will receive the movie and my new acting method, or how my acting will appear on the big screen,” she said.

After playing this new role, Park hopes to steer away from the usual love dramas and take on more varied roles. “I really look forward to working on a project or script that focuses on the inner human nature. Something that can really bring out what the human being is about,” Park said.

She will star alongside Korean actor Choi Min Sik in the Heart Blackened movie, which is set to air in November in Korea.