Seoul — Actor Kwak Dong Yeon was featured in Esquire magazine recently. The actor was interviewed and he spoke about his latest project, the tvN drama Vincenzo, his career so far, and more. The interviewer pointed out that even though Kwak Dong Yeon was just 25 years old, a lot of people did not know that he is so young because he had already been working for a couple of years.
Kwak Dong Yeon joked, “It’s because I look old. To be honest, up until two or three years ago, my age put a lot of restrictions on me. I was told, ‘You look like you’re in your mid- to late-twenties, but you’re actually too young.’ There were a lot of restrictions like that when it came to casting. I even requested that they remove my age from my public profile.”
Because of his looks, the actor has played several characters older than himself.
“I didn’t feel a sense of pressure about that,” he said. “In fact, I was happier. I was able to take on roles like that because people were confused about my age.” He added as a joke, “I think all the junk food and irregular eating and sleeping times from my trainee days made me look the way I do today.”
The Vincenzo actor has been living by himself since middle school, according to Soompi.
He said, “I started training from an early age, and as I watched the adults working in the entertainment industry, I had one wish. On TV, celebrities are portrayed as sensitive and temperamental and thinking only of themselves. I don’t know if those people exist in real life, but I’ve been absorbing such media since I was young, and I didn’t like it. I thought that when I became a celebrity later, I shouldn’t act like that. All projects, even this pictorial, is work for the celebrity, but it’s also work for the staff as well. I always think that it would be better if the people who are working together can do so while having fun. As I get older, I want to make people laugh, not just at work, but my fans and the people I love as well.”
Kwak Dong Yeon played Jang Han Seo in Vincenzo, the oldest character he has played to date and estimated to be about 29 years old. Now that Kwak Dong Yeon is 25 years old, he is approaching the same age as most of his characters.
Asked if this might feel awkward to him, he said, “No, I don’t think so. All the roles I play have something of myself in them. No matter what role I take on, I’ll try to put something of myself in them without making them stand out too much. That’s my job, after all.”
Kwak Dong Yeon wrote on Instagram, “Happy happy,” before Jang Han Seo died in the drama.
Asked about this, Kwak Dong Yeon said, “A lot of viewers were predicting Han Seo’s death, so I wanted to cause chaos. Of course, I wasn’t just playing around. From a character perspective, I think that Han Seo’s final decision was the best choice he could have made. Even if he had lived, he would have had to carry the weight of having killed someone, and dealt with the consequences of his collapsing company. In any event, he saved Vincenzo, the person who made him into a human being, and talked back to his older brother after having lived under his thumb his whole life. He managed to resolve a lot of things before he died. So, in a way, it was a happy ending for him.”
The actor spoke about getting close to many talented older seniors on the set such as Song Joong Ki, 2PM’s Taecyeon, Park Bo Gum and Yoo Seung Ho.
“To be honest, there were very few cases when I worked with people my age or younger,” he said. “I have almost no close colleagues my age. Since I’m used to working with people older than me, I think it might be difficult for me to approach my peers or those who are younger. I’m already feeling shy thinking about how I’ll work on a long project with people like that… But I’ll have to try my best to get used to it.”/TISG
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