He answered Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis: Which Hollywood star is starring in Squid Game Season 2?

In Season 1 of Squid Game, Lee Byun-hoon only appears on screen for a few seconds as the masked man. His role was not intended to be more than a cameo, as no sequel was originally planned. The success of the series changed the situation and therefore the South Korean actor was offered a more important role in the second season.

A large number of Netflix subscribers discovered Lee Byun-hoon through his role in Squid Game. However, the latter has long been known to moviegoers both for his remarkable career in South Korea and for his participation in Hollywood blockbusters.

The favorite actor of the master of South Korean cinema

Lee Byung-hoon grew up in Seoul in a wealthy family thanks to his businessman father. He studied French literature, cinema, took part in plays and practiced taekwondo diligently.

In the early 1990s, he made his first steps in a television series, then starred in several very unprofitable films. It wasn’t until 2000 and Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s blockbuster Joint Security Area that Lee Byung-hun experienced his first success.

Shortly after, he became a favorite actor of director Kim Ji-woon, who gave him leading roles in the thriller A Bittersweet Life (2005) and his western The Good, the Bad and the Crazy (2008). The high point of their collaboration was 2011’s I Met the Devil, a film as violent as it is visually brilliant.

“This was our third feature film together and I particularly like it because it’s shot with a huge amount of energy, although the plot is very simple, but there are themes chosen and the fact that the result is a very real sense of desperate desperation that runs through the film and meant that We were quite depressed during the shooting. He told us in an interesting interview.

A new career in Hollywood

His performance in I Met the Devil did not go unnoticed and opened the door to an international career. In 2009, he played the villain Storm Shadow in GI Joe – Rise of Cobra, a role he reprized four years later in GI Joe Conspiracy.

Signed for antagonistic roles, he also crossed paths with Bruce Willis in Red 2, then with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Genisys. He is also one of the Seven Mercenaries in the remake of the iconic Western alongside Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke.

In recent years, Lee Byung-hoon has teamed up with Kim Ji-woon for the fourth time in an eye-popping appearance in The Age of Shadows. Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk also filmed it in his 2017 feature film The Fortress, a historical mural that was a huge success at the South Korean box office.

A regular collaborator with Kim Ji-woon and Hwang Dong-hyuk, the 54-year-old actress is set to reunite with the filmmaker who made her a household name as she will soon star in Park Chan’s next film – Wook, a. Costa-Gavras remake of the French film Le Couperet with José García.

The first two seasons of Squid Game are now available exclusively on Netflix.

Discover the list of series currently available on the platform!