Lee Da-hae, or Lee Da-hey (born Byun Da-hye on April 19, 1984) is a Korean Australian actress. She is best known for her roles in Korean dramas such as Heaven's Fate (2004), My Girl (2005), Green Rose (2005), The Slave Hunters (2010), Miss Ripley (2011), and Hotel King (2014), as well as the Chinese dramas Love Actually (2012) and Best Couple (2016).

Lee Da-hae is well known for being fluent in Korean, Japanese, English and Chinese, earning her huge popularity in China. She is the first Korean actress to speak her lines in Mandarin, displaying her linguistic skills in Chinese dramas.

Early life 
Lee Da-hae, or known by her birth name as Byun Da-hye, was born in Seoul, South Korea on April 19, 1984. When she was in the fifth grade, Lee and her family moved to Sydney, Australia. Throughout her adolescence, she performed traditional Korean dance in various festivals, and was known as the "Korean Dancer Girl" at school. Her years of living abroad and studying in Australia made her become fluent in English and Chinese. In her junior year at Burwood Girls High School, Lee and her mother moved back to Seoul to pursue an acting career after winning a pageant while on leave of school. She now lives with her mother in Seoul while her father and her older brother still reside in Sydney.

Career

2001–2004: Beginnings and mainstream popularity
Byun made her entertainment debut when she won the 71st Miss Chunhyang Pageant in 2001. Using the stage name Lee Da-hae, she began to appear in minor and supporting roles in television dramas.

In 2004, Lee was cast in her first leading role in the Im Sung-han drama Lotus Flower Fairy (also known internationally as Heaven's Fate), in which she played the pure-hearted daughter of a shaman who becomes alienated by her family and society after her identity is revealed. She won Best New Actress at the 41st Baeksang Arts Awards for her performance.

2005–2009: Rising success
But 2005 would become Lee's breakout year. She showcased her versatility in two successful, but very different series. In Green Rose, her character falls in love with a man who gets framed for the attempted murder of her father; years later, she becomes slowly convinced that a doppelgänger is in fact, her boyfriend whom everybody had assumed was dead. Green Rose is her first TV series produced by SBS, Lee reunited with her Lotus Flower Fairy co-stars Jung Hye-sun and Han Jin-hee in Green Rose. In My Girl, she played a lovable con artist who agrees to act as a hotelier's long-lost cousin in order to fulfill his grandfather's last wishes. My Girl, in particular, shot Lee to domestic and Korean Wave stardom.

She returned to the romantic comedy genre in 2007 with Hello! Miss. Lee played the last living daughter of a once-respected clan in the countryside whose traditional feminine virtues is put to the test when the son of a rich investor demands that she sell her ancestral house to him.

In 2008, she starred in Robber, in the role of a young widowed single mother who is targeted by a con man for her savings, but he falls in love with her for real. Later that year, Lee was originally cast as the heroine in the inter-generational epic East of Eden, set against the backdrop of a coal mining town in Taebaek through the 1960s until the present. In this series, Lee reunited with her Sweet 18 co-star Han Ji-hye. Though the drama was a hit, as it went on, Lee's screen time became drastically reduced in favor of other storylines, such that she decided to leave the show in episode 40.

2009–2014: Breakthrough popularity
Lee joined Rain's agency J. Tune Entertainment in 2009, then appeared in the music video for "Pas de Deux" with Taiwanese singer/actor Will Pan. She was also admitted to Konkuk University, where she majored in Theater and Film.

In 2010, Lee starred in the hit Joseon period/fusion drama The Slave Hunters, in which she played Un-nyun, who is torn between her past love, a yangban-turned-slave hunter, and her present companion, a general-turned-slave. Lee reunited with her Green Rose co-stars Lee Jong-hyuk and Sung Dong-il. Early in the series, some viewers criticized her for having pristine makeup and manicured nails despite portraying a slave on the run, for allegedly wearing a wrist watch onscreen, and her supposedly "inappropriate and gratuitous" cleavage exposure when her hanbok top was removed in an attempted rape scene. Lee opined that those issues weren't a big deal, and had only been magnified by the show's popularity. Her character also received criticism for being an overly passive damsel in distress, and a "Public Menace Un-nyun" (민폐언년) meme circulated, to the extent that writer Chun Sung-il issued a public defense and apology towards Lee.

In what would have been her big screen debut, she was cast in Song of Springs, a 3D film adaptation of the novel by Kim Hoon about the creator of the gayageum. But funding fell through and the film was never made.

She was then cast in the leading role of Korea's first female royal barista who plots to assassinate King Gojong through poisoned coffee in Gabi, adapted from the historical fiction novel Russian Coffee by Kim Tak-hwan. Lee agreed to star in the film via verbal agreement, but when she dropped out of the project ten days before filming began, production company Ocean Film sued her for breach of contract. In September 2012, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, ordering Lee to pay  () in damages, or 40% liability. Lee was replaced by Kim So-yeon.

In 2011, Lee played an antiheroine with a traumatic past who lies and manipulates her way up the hotel executive ladder and into the hearts of two powerful men in Miss Ripley. She called the role "a turning point in her acting career." Lee's character was inspired by Shin Jeong-ah, a former curator convicted for fabricating her academic credentials and embezzling funds, and the title references the Hollywood film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Lee, who is fluent in English and Mandarin, and has a significant fan base in China with more than six million followers on her Weibo microblog, made her Chinese television drama debut in 2012. Previous Korean actresses who had appeared in Chinese productions spoke their lines in Korean and were later dubbed, but Lee worked hard to master the language and fully memorized her lines, making her the first Korean actress to perform in Mandarin. In Love Recipe (internationally known as Love Actually) opposite Taiwanese actor Joe Cheng, she played a part-timer raising her niece on her own who discovers her talent for cooking at a dim sum restaurant and dreams of becoming a chef. It was shot in Shanghai and aired on Hunan TV. Also that year, her contract with DBM Entertainment ended, and she signed with a new agency, Forestar Entertainment.

Lee returned to Korean television in the 2013 espionage-action drama Iris II, the sequel to the 2009 hit series. This was her third time to be paired onscreen with Jang Hyuk, after Robber (2008) and The Slave Hunters (2010).

Lee signed with a new agency, FNC Entertainment in 2014. She reunited with previous My Girl costar Lee Dong-wook in Hotel King, in which she played an heiress trying to save the family-owned seven-star hotel. After Hotel King ended, Lee landed seven endorsement deals with clothing and cosmetic brands across Asia.

2015–2018: Acting setback
Lee was next cast as a top actress forced to marry an actor she hates in the Korean-Chinese drama Best Couple; it is the first TV series produced by Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and aired in China in early 2016. and recorded more than 100 million views.

In April 2016, Lee left FNC Entertainment and signed an exclusive contract with JS Pictures.

In 2018, Lee is set to return to the small screen in Korea, starring in SBS' drama Good Witch.

2019–present: New agencies
In April 2019, Lee signed an exclusive contract with FN Entertainment.

In April 2021, Lee signed with Ascendio Reserve following the expiration of her contract with the former agency.

In March 2022, Lee signed with new agency K-Star Global Entertainment.

Personal life
In December 2013, Lee filed defamation charges against Internet users who spread malicious rumors claiming she had been involved in an upscale celebrity prostitution ring. Prosecutors cleared Lee of the allegations, stating that she was not one of the entertainers being investigated.

Relationship and marriage 
On September 6, 2016, an exclusive report from Sports Chosen reported that Lee and singer Se7en have been dating for over a year. On March 20, 2023, Lee announced their engagement on her social media accounts. They married in a private ceremony on May 6, 2023, at Hotel Shilla in Seoul.

Discography

Filmography

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Living people
1984 births
South Korean actresses
South Korean television actresses
Konkuk University alumni
Australian people of South Korean descent
Da-hae
이다해(, 1984년 4월 19일~)는 대한민국 출신의 오스트레일리아의 배우이다.

학력 
  졸업
 일신여자상업고등학교 졸업
 건국대학교 영화학과

생애 
서울특별시에서 1남 1녀 중 둘째로 태어났다. 영문명은 Cherry Byeon이다.

데뷔 전 
초등학교 시절, KBS 어린이 뮤지컬 합창단원으로 3년 정도 활동했으며, 이를 계기로 KBS 라디오의 동요프로그램에서 목소리 연기를 하기도 했다. 초등학교 5학년 때인 1995년 가족들과 함께 오스트레일리아로 이민을 떠나서 뉴사우스웨일스주 시드니 이너웨스트 크로이던에 위치한 버우드 여자고등학교를 다녔다. 고등학교 재학 시절, 어릴 때부터 틈틈이 익혀온 한국무용으로 인기를 끌었으며, 학교에서 매주 화요일을 '스포츠데이'로 정했는데 '코리아 댄스반'을 만들어 다른 학생들을 지도하기도 했다.

합창단원으로 방송국을 드나들며 연기자의 꿈을 꿨던 이다해는 2001년 할아버지 장례식을 치르기 위해 잠시 귀국했다가 주위 친지들의 권유로 제71회 전국춘향선발대회에 참가해, 미스 춘향 진에 뽑히게 되었다. 한국에 정착하게 된 이다해는 대학 진학을 위해 고등학교에 편입했고 이후 2009년 건국대학교 예술학부 영화전공으로 입학하였다.

연기 활동 
이다해는 2002년 MBC 특집 드라마 《순수청년 박종철》에서 박종철의 첫사랑 이은주 역으로 데뷔하여, 한중 합작드라마 《링링》, 문화방송 일요아침드라마 《기쁜 소식》 등 세 편의 드라마에 연이어 출연하면서 연기 활동을 시작하였다. 그러나 세 편에서 모두 별다른 이목을 끌지 못하자 각오를 새로 다지며 원래 예명이었던 '이다혜'를 지금의 '이다해'로 바꿨다. '다해'라는 이름은 '뭐든지 다한다'라는 뜻으로 '어떤 어려운 역할이라도 최선을 다해 멋지게 해낼 것'이라는 각오를 담았다고 한다. 눈물연기만은 자신 있다는 그녀는 2002년 제이워크의 《Someday》 뮤직비디오에 출연했을 당시 무려 18시간 동안 눈물을 쉬지 않고 흘려 제작진을 놀라게 하기도 했다.

드디어 2004년 MBC 일일연속극 《왕꽃 선녀님》에서 문초원 역을 연기하면서 주목받기 시작한다. 이어 2005년 SBS 드라마 스페셜 《마이걸》에서 귀여운 사기꾼 주유린 역할을 완벽하게 소화해내며 스타덤에 오른다.

2015년부터 가수 세븐과 연애하였고 2023년 5월 6일, 8년간의 열애 끝에 서울 중구에 있는 신라호텔에서 결혼식을 올렸다.

드라마/영화 작품

KBS

타방송사

영화 출연

예능/기타

진행

예능 출연

뮤직 비디오 출연

음반

홍보대사 

 2006년 12월 한국장애인단체 총연맹 홍보대사
 2007년 1월 한중문화교류축제 홍보대사
 2010년 2월 대한민국 녹색성장위원회 홍보대사
 2010년 10월 아동복지운동본부 소외아동복지 홍보대사
 2010년 10월 호주 홍보대사
 2010년 11월 건국대학교 홍보대사
 2015년 11월 한국산 정품 온라인 특별할인전 미디어데이 홍보대사

광고 출연

수상 경력

에피소드/사건 및 논란 
 2010년 KBS 수목드라마 《추노》 출연 당시 연기한 언년이(김혜원) 역할 때문에 '민폐언년'이라는 별명과 더불어 노비 신분일 때와 도망자 신분일 때 항상 신부화장을 하여 많은 비난을 받았으나 신부화장은 이다해 본인이 요구한 것이 아닌 제작진의 설정이었다고 추노 제작진은 해명하였다.

 2011년 3월 1일에는 이다해 본인의 휴지 노출 해프닝으로 굉장할 정도의 불미스러운 사건이 일어났다. 정확한 설명에 따르면, 이다해는 2011년 2월 28일에 열린 서울문화예술대상 시상식 MC를 맡아 노란색 화사한 드레스를 입고 레드 카펫을 밟았다. 그리고 드레스 사이로 정체불명의 흰 물체가 발견되어 대단히 굴욕적인 사진들이 인터넷에 떠돌았다. 이런 일이 일어난 그 다음날 오후 이다해는 자신의 트위터에 "소위 이지메를 당하는 것 같다"라는 발언으로 파문을 일으켜 많은 누리꾼들의 입방아에 오르게 되었다.

 2016년 9월 친구사이였던 가수 세븐(최동욱)과 열애 사실을 인정하면서 큰 화제를 모았다. 이다해는 세븐과의 열애 사실을 인정하면서 "전에는 친구사이로 지냈으나 1년여전부터 서로에게 큰 호감을 가지고 만나기 시작했다"라며 열애 사실을 인정했다.

 이다해는 각각 영화 《가비》, 《현의 노래》의 여주인공으로 낙점되어 촬영에 들어갈 예정이었으나, 모두 본인과 맞지 않거나 개인 사정으로 펑크를 내면서 갑작스럽게 고사하자 제작사측에서 일방적으로 출연번복 책임을 물어 배상금 2100만원을 요구했고, 결국 해당 금액을 배상하였다.

각주

외부 링크 
 
 
 

1984년 출생
살아있는 사람
초계 변씨
오스트레일리아의 여자 텔레비전 배우
대한민국의 여자 텔레비전 배우
건국대학교 동문
일신여자상업고등학교 동문
중국에 거주한 오스트레일리아인
오스트레일리아에 거주한 대한민국인
중국에 거주한 대한민국인
서울특별시 출신
서울특별시 출신 배우
20세기 오스트레일리아 사람
21세기 오스트레일리아 사람
20세기 대한민국 사람
21세기 대한민국 사람
KBS 연기대상 여자 우수연기상 수상자
백상예술대상 TV부문 여자 신인연기상 수상자