Lyrics, Artist and Movies ( Book 1 )

⚡️Jun Ji-Hyun

Born    Wang Ji-hyun
30 October 1981 (age 34)
Seoul, South Korea
Other names    Gianna Jun
Alma mater    Dongguk University - Theater and Film
Occupation    Actress
Years active    1997-present
Agent    Culture Depot
Religion    Buddhism[citation needed]
Spouse(s)    Choi Joon-hyuk (m. 2012)
Website    www.giannajun.com
Korean name
Hangul    전지현
Hanja    全智賢
Revised Romanization    Jeon Ji-hyeon
McCune-Reischauer    Chŏn Chihyŏn
Birth name
Hangul    왕지현
Hanja    王智賢
Revised Romanization    Wang Ji-hyeon
McCune-Reischauer    Wang Chihyŏn
Jun Ji-hyun (Hangul: 전지현; hanja: 全智賢; born Wang Ji-hyun, 30 October 1981), also known as Gianna Jun, is a South Korean actress. She is best known for her role as "The Girl" in the romantic comedy My Sassy Girl (2001), one of the highest-grossing Korean comedies of all time. Other notable films include Il Mare (2000), Windstruck (2004), The Thieves (2012), and The Berlin File (2013), as well as the television series My Love from the Star (2013-2014).

Career   

Wang Ji-hyun was born in Seoul, South Korea. Her childhood dream was to become a flight attendant, but at the age of 16, she was discovered on the street by a fashion editor.[1] Using the stage name Jun Ji-hyun, she began her career as a model for Ecole Magazine in 1997.

Jun first became well known as a commercial model and as a TV actress. Although she made her film debut in the little-watched White Valentine in 1999, it was not until later in the year when she was featured in a commercial for Samsung My Jet Printer that she became a popular sensation. The dancing and attitude expressed in the ad made her into an icon for Koreans in their late teens and early twenties.[2]

After continuing her TV and modelling career, Jun made her first well-publicized film appearance in late 2000 with Il Mare. A handsomely shot melodrama set on Ganghwa Island, the film did respectably well at the box office (despite opening on the same day as blockbuster Joint Security Area) and solidified her status as a star.[2]

Jun's breakout film was comedy My Sassy Girl, which became a huge hit both in Korea and throughout Asia with its tale of a gullible college student and his slightly unhinged girlfriend.[3] The film spent two weeks at No. 1 in Hong Kong, and turned her into Korea's most recognizable star in the Chinese-language market.[4][5][6] She also won as Best Actress at the 2002 Grand Bell Awards. Two years then passed before she appeared in her next film, an "occult thriller" titled The Uninvited which wowed critics but failed to catch on with viewers.[7] Throughout this time she was a constant presence in TV ads and on billboards in Korea and also in other Asian countries.[2][8][9]

2004 saw her return to the big screen in another film by Kwak Jae-yong, the director of My Sassy Girl. Windstruck cast her in the role of a policewoman, but many viewers felt it was too similar to My Sassy Girl. There were also signs that her popularity had started to suffer because of overexposure in advertisements.[10][11] Nonetheless, Windstruck became the best-performing Korean film in Japan at the time, where My Sassy Girl was not as well known.[2][12][13] In a 2005 survey of influential movie producers, she was ranked among the top ten most bankable stars in Korea.[14]

Jun's next project Daisy teamed her with Jung Woo-sung (who frequently appeared together with her in Giordano and 2% Lotte Chilsung Water advertisements), and drew attention for its 100% location shooting in the Netherlands, and for using the Hong Kong director Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs). Nonetheless the film disappointed at the box-office and drew weak appraisals from viewers.[2][15]

In late 2006 it was announced that Jun would be making her long-predicted jump to Hollywood to take the lead role in Blood: The Last Vampire.[16] The international co-production, which was filmed in China and Argentina in 2007, is the live-action adaptation of a popular Japanese anime.[2] She went through three months of hard training to play the sword-wielding martial arts heroine.[17] During the filming and promotions for the movie prior to its 2009 release,[18][19][20] she adopted the Westernized name Gianna Jun.[21][22] "Gianna by True Religion" was launched by the luxury blue jeans brand in 2008, its first celebrity line. Jun was reportedly involved in every stage of their production, from design to deciding on fit and wash and their decoration with accessories.[23]

For the film A Man Who Was Superman, Jun cut off her signature long silky hair to play a cynical documentary producer who meets an odd, Hawaiian-shirt-clad modern-day hero who battles urban apathy and preaches the virtues of lending a hand. Of initially feeling pressured at the opportunity to work with acclaimed actor Hwang Jung-min, she said, "Although luck was probably involved, I think it's destiny for an actor to 'meet' new work. On the first day I met him, I realized that I have much to learn from him, not only from his acting, but also as an individual."[24][25]

In 2010, she acted opposite Chinese actress Li Bingbing in the English-language film Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, based on Lisa See's bestselling novel of the same name, which was directed by Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club). The film, set in remote 19th-century China, features the lifelong friendship between two women, Lily and Snow Flower, and their imprisonment imposed by the strict cultural codes of conduct for women at that time.[26][27][28][29] She was photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the July issue of the American edition of Vogue, the first Korean actress to be included in the iconic fashion magazine.[30][31]

As part of the star-studded cast of The Thieves, Jun was a scene stealer in Choi Dong-hoon's heist film about thieves from Korea and China who team up together to steal a diamond worth US$30 million, which is locked in a special room at a casino in Macau.[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] The Thieves became the second top-selling Korean film of all time.[40]

She played a translator married to a North Korean intelligence agent in the 2013 spy thriller The Berlin File, and director Ryoo Seung-wan praised Jun's action scenes and her North Korean dialect.[41][42][43][44]

14 years after Happy Together in 1999, Jun made her highly anticipated return to television in fantasy romance My Love from the Star.[45] Kim Soo-hyun (Jun's costar in The Thieves) played an alien who landed on earth 400 years ago during the Joseon Dynasty, then falls for a present-day top actress (played by Jun).[46][47] The series was a ratings success, sparking trends in fashion, make-up and restaurants.[48] Jun won the Daesang (or "Grand Prize"), the highest award for television, at the 2014 Baeksang Arts Awards and the 2014 SBS Drama Awards.[49][50][51][52][53][54]