Oh Dal-su

Oh Dal-su's screen career launched in earnest in 2001, but the real turning point came two years later with Park Chan-wook's *Oldboy* (2003). His role as the owner of an organized crime-funded private jail is a small part on paper — but it's the kind of scene-setting performance that makes the film's world feel real and dangerous in a way that the leads alone can't accomplish. That collaboration with Park Chan-wook didn't stop there; he went on to appear in six of the director's films, including *Lady Vengeance* (2005) and *Thirst* (2009), making him one of the director's most trusted recurring collaborators (Wikipedia). 2005 was a busy year. He played a former gang boss in *Mapado* and a weapons smuggler in *A Bittersweet Life* — two very different registers, both convincing. He also voiced the creature in Bong Joon-ho's *The Host* (2006), a credit that doesn't show up on his face but absolutely shows up in that film's DNA. The monster's guttural, almost pathetic sounds are a big part of why the creature works emotionally, not just as spectacle. A transvestite role in *Foxy Festival* (2010) and the con artist turn in *The Thieves* (2012) kept demonstrating his range through the decade. The awards recognition came with *Ode to My Father* (2014) — he won both the Grand Bell Award and the Blue Dragon Film Award for his work in that film in 2015, the kind of double-win that tends to reframe how the industry talks about an actor. His portrayal of a sympathetic inmate in *Miracle in Cell No. 7* (2013) had already shown he could carry emotional weight without leaning on genre mechanics. He's continued working steadily into the 2020s, with *Veteran 2: I, the Executioner* (2024) and *Boss* (2025) among his most recent credits (Wikipedia, TMDB).