Ryoo Seung-bum (; born August 9, 1980) is a South Korean actor. He made a name for himself in a variety of eclectic films directed by his older brother Ryoo Seung-wan, notably Die Bad (his acting debut in 2000), Arahan (2004), Crying Fist (2005), The Unjust (2010), and The Berlin File (2013). Known for his manic energy, calm demeanor, and subtle ability to command a scene, over the years Ryoo has cemented himself as one of Korea's top actors.
Early life Ryoo Seung-bum was born in Asan, South Chungcheong Province. His family moved to Seoul, where he first attended Jamjeon Elementary School, before moving back to a small town in South Chungcheong Province called Onyang, where he spent his middle school years. He returned to Seoul to study at Daedong Technical High School, but dropped out before graduating. Ryoo later said he had a hard time finding the motivation to study, but acting would bring about an important change in his life, giving him something he could immerse himself in.
Career
1999–2004: Early career His older brother Ryoo Seung-wan was at the time an aspiring filmmaker, and from 1996 to 1999, he shot four low-budget short films starring himself, his younger brother Seung-bum, and several friends. In strikingly diverse styles but with similar narratives, these shorts were re-edited, combined and released in 2000 as Ryoo Seung-wan's feature directorial debut Die Bad. Critically acclaimed as powerfully visceral, gut-wrenching, and searingly angry, the film became an instant cult hit, earning attention for the Ryoo brothers. One review described Ryoo Seung-bum's acting debut as "a startling, naturalistic turn," and he won Best New Actor at the Grand Bell Awards.
Their success continued with Ryoo Seung-wan's follow-up Dachimawa Lee, a 35-minute short film parodying Korean action films of the 60s and 70s, Bruce Lee, Shaw Brothers and Jackie Chan flicks, and the machismo kitsch of old Korean melodramas, coupled with over-the-top voice dubbing and deliberately mistimed action. Ryoo played Washington, a young thug with a heart of gold and a huge afro. The short, streamed on the now-defunct Cine4M website, was enormously popular online.
Ryoo next starred in Yim Soon-rye's Waikiki Brothers, a 2001 film chronicling the fate of a mediocre nightclub band, with its bittersweet mixture of boyhood aspirations and love of music, overlaid with the struggles and reality of adulthood. Ryoo had a supporting role as a young waiter eager to learn how to play the drums and perform onstage.
Later that year, he ventured into television, as part of the main cast of a 50-episode family drama Wonderful Days, along with Ji Sung, Park Sun-young, and Gong Hyo-jin. Ryoo received Best New Actor for TV from the Baeksang Arts Awards.
In 2002, he appeared in Ryoo Seung-wan's sophomore effort, the gangster/heist film No Blood No Tears starring Jeon Do-yeon and Jung Jae-young. The film was a critical and box office disappointment. But he was starting to make a name for himself in the industry separate from his brother. Ryoo joined Jung, Shin Ha-kyun, and an ensemble cast of Jang Jin regulars in No Comment (also known as Mudjima Family), an omnibus comprising three short films. His performance as a put-upon concierge was one of the highlights of the first short Enemies in Four Directions. He also had a small but memorable role in Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.
He then reunited with Noh Hee-kyung, the writer of Wonderful Days, in the TV drama Solitude, a May–December romance between a man in his early twenties and a much older terminally ill single mother (played by Lee Mi-sook).
Conduct Zero capped Ryoo's year, in his first big-screen leading role as the tough, brawn-over-brain "king" of his high school who unexpectedly and awkwardly falls for a nerdy girl (played by Lim Eun-kyung). The 1980s-set comedy was a minor hit, selling nearly 1.7 million tickets and solidifying Ryoo's stardom.
Ryoo made his theater debut in Lee Sang-woo's stage play Bieonso (; "Toilet"). Directed by stage/TV actor Park Kwang-jung, Bieonso ran at the Dongsoong Art Center from November 4 to December 28, 2003.
For the TV program Nursery Story, Ryoo and Yoon Jin-seo appeared in Christmas Lovers, which aired in four five-minute daily installments on MBC in December 22 to December 25, 2003. In Min Kyu-dong's short Secrets and Lies (released by the Korean Academy of Film Arts in the 2003 omnibus Twentidentity), Ryoo's character finds himself in a dilemma when his fiancee's mother hits on him.
Ryoo began 2004 in the TV series Sunlight Pours Down co-starring Song Hye-kyo and Jo Hyun-jae, but it didn’t catch on with audiences. Thereafter Ryoo would concentrate solely on film.
In Ryoo Seung-wan's Arahan, he played a hapless traffic cop who discovers he has untapped martial arts skills, and he's trained by masters played by Ahn Sung-ki and Yoon So-yi. Part modern-day wuxia, part superhero film and part small-town comedy, it was Ryoo Seung-wan's first foray into commercial cinema, and the film was a moderate box office success at around 2 million tickets sold. It also solidified Ryoo's star charisma and his natural affinity for comedy.
Ryoo then starred in Kim Sung-su's online short Back (streamed on Daum in October 2004). Set in a dystopia where everyone literally moves backward, his character sparks a revolution and becomes hunted by the authorities for daring to move forward.
2005–2007: Critical success Though Ryoo had been steadily impressing critics and audiences since his debut, it was Crying Fist in 2005 that would change his career. Considered a showcase for the talents of the Ryoo brothers, the movie is a real-life-inspired story of two boxers, showing their journeys in a parallel narrative structure: one is a hardened teenage criminal who takes up boxing in reform school, the other a retired boxer in his forties earning his keep as a "human punching bag" who returns to the ring partly to redeem himself in the eyes of his son and wife. Only at the climax would the two protagonists meet as opponents in the final match, two men from different backgrounds and social positions, but united in their status as total losers, struggling to regain self-respect and purpose in their lives. Ryoo and co-star Choi Min-sik underwent boxing training like they were preparing for a real match; they didn't use body doubles in the scene and exchanged real blows. Director Ryoo Seung-wan discussed on the film's DVD how his brother had to access his real personality and real-life memories for his onscreen breakdown, and critics praised Ryoo's range, caged fury and passion in the role, calling the performance amazing and mesmerizing, such that he overshadowed his older, more prestigious colleague Choi. Crying Fist opened against A Bittersweet Life, and despite excellent reviews for both films, they ended up canceling each other out at the box office, selling a little over a million tickets each. This performance cemented Ryoo's reputation as one of the top actors of his generation, and one of the country's leading acting figures.
For a change of pace, Ryoo next starred in the romantic comedy The Beast and the Beauty, playing a voice actor who lies about his looks to his blind pianist girlfriend (played by Shin Min-ah).
In 2006, his real-life ex-girlfriend Gong Hyo-jin asked him to make a cameo appearance in Kim Tae-yong's critically acclaimed drama Family Ties. He played her character's ex-boyfriend, lending a meta aspect and irony to their few scenes together.
He then returned to film noir with Bloody Tie opposite Hwang Jung-min (they had previously worked together in Waikiki Brothers). Set amidst the meth drug trade in Busan after the IMF crisis, the film drew unanimously positive reviews. Critics praised Ryoo's portrayal of a small-time drug dealer, and he won Best Actor at the Golden Cinematography Awards and the Baeksang Arts Awards.
Ryoo and Im Chang-jung lent their voices to the adult animated comedy Aachi & Ssipak, set in a futuristic world fueled by human feces where the government implants a microchip into each of its citizens' anuses to check their bowel movements for stable energy supply, rewarding good performance with addictive popsicles. As the title characters, Ryoo and Im play street gangsters who steal popsicles and sell them in the black market. Ryoo reprised his role as Aachi; he had previously voiced the character in a Flash animated demo clip introduced as an internet sneak preview in 2001 (Ssipak was originally voiced by Im Won-hee), However, due to investor problems, it would take a total of eight years for the feature-length film to be finished. Like its predecessors in homegrown animation My Beautiful Girl, Mari and Wonderful Days, Aachi & Ssipak was well-reviewed, but a box office flop.
In 2007, Ryoo had a small role in Im Chang-jung's comedy Underground Rendezvous. He played a teacher assigned to a mountainous village, but who gets trapped in the middle of nowhere for three months, unable to move his right foot after stepping on a land mine; reviews called his cameo appearance "hilarious."
2008–2010: Genre expansion Radio Dayz marked Ryoo's next leading role in 2008. He played Lloyd, a fast-thinking producer of an underfunded and understaffed radio program during Japanese colonial rule in 1930. To gain listeners, he creates a radio drama, the first of its kind in Korea, using formulaic tropes such as love triangles, amnesia, long-lost siblings, etc. The show's success also attracts the attention of the Japanese colonial government, and one of his voice actors is secretly working for the Korean Independence Army. Ryoo was praised for his versatility and nuanced take on the role, but the film did not do well at the box office.
Ryoo Seung-wan's next film Dachimawa Lee returned to the beloved character from his 2000 short (played by Im Won-hee). The spy action film/parody is set during the 1940s in the last years of Japanese colonial rule, as Dachimawa Lee, his allies and enemies search for the whereabouts of a stolen national treasure, a golden Buddha statue that also contains a list of Korean freedom fighters wanted by imperial authorities. Ryoo played one of the minor villains, making quirky vagabond Border Lynx into a likeable rogue.
In 2009, Ryoo, Park Hae-il, Moon So-ri, and Uhm Ji-won starred in Baik Hyun-jhin's 33-minute short film The End, in which four episodes with different stories all end with the close-up shot of the actor's facial expressions for more than 1 minute, then superimposed is the text, "The End."
Ryoo said he chose his next film, No Mercy, simply because he wanted to work with actor Sul Kyung-gu. Ryoo played an environmental activist who confesses to a series of murders, then forces a renowned autopsy specialist (played by Sol) to compromise all his professional ethics by tampering with autopsy results in order to save his kidnapped daughter from being killed. The film was criticized for its lack of visual style and convoluted plot, but reviews said the film's highlight was the dramatic intensity between the two lead actors in their confrontation scenes in the police interrogation room, with Ryoo playing his role with a subtle eeriness.
Kim Dae-woo's The Servant subverted the classic folktale Chunhyangjeon with the premise that the heroine Chunhyang is ambitious instead of virtuous, and that she falls in love with Bang-ja, the servant of Lee Mong-ryong (while Lee, played by Ryoo, is far from heroic). Co-starring Kim Joo-hyuk and Jo Yeo-jeong, the costume drama depicted the Joseon era's sexual mores and class system with sly humor and cynicism.
Ensemble comedy Foxy Festival explored unconventional sexual preferences in a light-hearted and non-judgmental manner, and in it Ryoo played a fish sausage ("odeng") hawker with a RealDoll fetish.