Kim Woo-bin (김우빈)

There is a special—almost guilty—pleasure to witnessing a cold tsundere boy catch feelings for an ordinary girl, which is why this predictable Austenian formula has been the backbone of many a young romance novel and comic all these years. We may think we are beyond falling for such a trope, but when Kim Woo-bin asked the famous question, “Don’t accept what—my heart?” with an arched brow and a smile, many of us still gleefully swooned and fell for it.

Photo from Ilgan Sports/Multi-Bits via Getty Images/Tatler Asia

Birthday: July 16, 1989 Instagram: @____kimwoobin

Kim first made many hearts flutter as Kim Young-do in the teen youth series The Heirs (2013). When the drama's popularity peaked nationwide at 25.6%, his tsundere role was cause for serious second-lead syndrome. He won his first acting award in School 2013 (2012) and later received critical acclaim for his gang member character in his first movie Friend: The Great Legacy. He then starred as a thief, a playboy, and a con artist, until he took the lead in Uncontrollably Fond (2016), where he flipped his bad-boy image and cemented his heartthrob status.

He had already been cast in the 2017 film Wiretap and was appointed 2018 Winter Olympics honorary ambassador when he was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer, stalling his promising career. Luckily, his longtime girlfriend Shin Min-ah had chosen to stay with him through the darkest days, even taking two years off her own acting career to help him recover.

Recently, he has been pronounced cancer-free and is now able to resume his acting endeavors. It looks like he isn't wasting any time either: last year alone, he has been in three projects, the fun supermarket tvN variety show Unexpected Business 2, the hit star-studded omnibus tvN drama Our Blues, and his sci-fi fantasy movie Alienoid. After 2023’s Netflix Original dystopian series Black Knight, he reunites with both The Heirs screenwriter Kim Eun-sook and Uncontrollaby Fond co-star Bae Suzy in the 12-episode romantic fantasy All Shall Come True.