Moon Chae-won (문채원)

The actor who can break a longstanding Korean TV taboo, star in a record-breaking period film, AND be named Honorary Prosecutor by the Supreme Prosecutor's Office could only be Moon Chae-won!

Photo from News 1/HanCinema

Birthday: November 13, 1986

Instagram: @moonchaewon_official

Before girls’ love became mainstream, she, together with Moon Geun-yeong, received the Best Couple Award—the first pair of actresses to receive such recognition—in the 2008 SBS Drama Awards. The distinction was for the historical TV series Painter of the Wind (2008), adapted from the bestselling historical novel by Lee Jung-myung. She played Jung-hyang, a gisaeng who falls in love with a woman painter disguised as a man (Moon Geun-yeong). The couple handled the homoerotic relationship so adeptly that they received the most votes from a generally conservative audience.

In 2009, acting as Seung-mi in Brilliant Legacy, she alternately tortures and pities her stepsister. She starred alongside Han Hyo-joo, Lee Seung-gi, and Bae Soo-bin in the romantic drama/comedy, which was at the top spot for 20 consecutive weeks at 45.2% peak nationwide ratings. Her role in 2011’s highest-grossing Korean movie War of the Arrows won her Best New Actress at the 48th Grand Bell Awards and the 32nd Blue Dragon Film Awards. As Ja-in, she is kidnapped by Mongolian invaders, but her wit and will to live save her. In the short film Awaiting, part of the Beautiful 2014 omnibus project that premiered at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, she depicted a woman separated from her husband for 60 years because of the division of North and South Korea. In 2015, she won the Producers’ Choice Award at the 19th Bucheon International Film Festival for Love Forecast.

In 2020, she portrayed the role of Ji-won, a brilliant detective married to a "perfect" house-husband (Lee Joon-gi) in Flower of Evil. Far from a damsel in distress, she is a perceptive detective who saves her husband from his enemies and dark secret past.

Earlier, she and Kwon Sang-woo were cast in the rom-com movie We Grow Up, a remake of the Argentinian film No Kids. In her latest k-drama this year, she paired up with veteran Lee Sun-kyun in the SBS revenge thriller Payback.