In ‘Possible Love,’ Jeon Do-yeon Delivers the Year’s Most Shattering Performance. Can It Take Her to the Oscars?

November 9, 2026

In the nearly three decades since she made her big-screen debut in 1997’s The Contact, Jeon Do-yeon has earned a richly deserved reputation in South Korea—and far beyond it—as the kind of actor who inhabits her characters so fully that it ceases to feel like acting at all. (International audiences likely know her best for 2007’s Secret Sunshine, a wrenching portrait of a grieving mother that made her the first Korean performer to win an acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival.)

Critics often reach for the word “fearless” to describe her, but when we speak via Zoom at the tail end of a marathon press day in Seoul, Jeon waves that notion away.

“I’m always scared, and I’m full of fear, especially in front of the camera,” she says, with a laugh. “I’ve been working as an actor for quite some time, but it’s an ongoing process.” In fact, it’s important to her that she never gets too comfortable. “I actually enjoy having that fear and anxiety, and trying my best to work through it, because sometimes something completely new comes out of that struggle.”

That willingness to sit in discomfort is vividly, devastatingly evident in Possible Love, out now on Netflix after a theatrical run in October—and recently selected as South Korea’s official submission for the 2027 Academy Awards. The film marks the long-awaited return of legendary auteur Lee Chang-dong (arguably best known for the hypnotic 2018 masterpiece Burning, which became the first Korean movie ever shortlisted for the best international feature Oscar and topped critics’ year-end lists across the West) after an eight-year hiatus, and a reunion for Jeon and Lee nearly 20 years after Secret Sunshine.

Constructed with Lee’s signature novelistic sweep, Possible Love centers on the complicated dynamic between two married couples from starkly different strata of contemporary Korean society. Jeon stars as Mi-ok, a pragmatic mask-factory worker living quietly with her young son and her husband, Ho-seok (played by her frequent screen partner Sul Kyung-gu). Years after a mass factory layoff and a violently suppressed labor strike, Ho-seok remains haunted by the trauma. When the funeral of a former co-worker brings them into the orbit of Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong, best known as the rich mom in Parasite), an intellectual documentary filmmaker chronicling laid-off laborers, and her wealthy, enigmatic husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), Mi-ok agrees to let Ye-ji film their daily lives. Yet what begins as a study of liberal empathy—and a moving portrait of across-the-divide solidarity—gradually warps into something far more strange and ambiguous, exploring the fault lines of privilege, hidden desire, and voyeurism.

Oscar buzz has swirled around her performance—a stunning and powerfully subtle tightrope walk of stoicism and simmering longing—since the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, but Jeon remains pragmatic about what all this fanfare actually means. “When I won the award at Cannes 20 years ago, I remember thinking, Is this going to change my life? Probably not. Am I going to change as an actor because I have a Cannes award?” she reflects. “I’m very happy that we’re competing at the Oscars, and it’s wonderful that people are talking about the film, but I don’t think it will change me or the way I perform in any way.”

Below, Jeon discusses her on-screen reunion with Sul Kyung-gu, the unlikely magic fostered by Lee Chang-dong’s aversion to having his actors rehearse, and how a story of trauma and class tension deeply rooted in Korean society found universal resonance.

Vogue: Now that Possible Love is streaming on Netflix and reaching a massive global audience, how are you feeling? Have you been hearing much feedback?

Jeon Do-yeon: I watched the movie once again as soon as it was on Netflix. I think Possible Love is a type of movie that leaves a different afterglow for different people, and people can analyze it differently and interpret it in endless ways. Now that it’s on Netflix, I feel like people are finding their own ways to think about the movie—it leaves a lot of food for thought. I’m very proud that people are talking a lot about it.

To go back to the beginning, you obviously have a deep history with director Lee Chang-dong. How did he first approach you about Possible Love? I believe this idea had been gestating for almost a decade.

I do know that Director Lee worked on this project for quite a long time—he had it in his mind for more than 10 years. Ten years ago, he wanted to talk about this worker and his wife, the couple who had been laid off. Sometimes that story diverged into different paths, and sometimes they were scrapped; I know there were a lot of different versions along the way. When I knew that he finally had a script, I really wanted to know what it was about. I was waiting for that script. [Laughs.]

Given how layered the story is, what struck you most when you finally read it? What drew you to Mi-ok?

When I first read the script, I could feel the 10 years’ worth of thought and effort that Director Lee put into it. I was very touched reading it, and I was like, “Of course this is a Chang-dong film. It is this good.” And then I thought about what I could relate to about my character, Mi-ok. Of all the traits that she has, I think she holds this anxiety, and that anxiety stems from her wish to protect certain things. Although Mi-ok may seem a little bit fragile or weak from the outside, I think she’s a very strong woman inside, so that is something that I took note of.

One of the aspects of your performance I found most striking is the physicality—the way Mi-ok holds herself is such an important part of how her story is told. Did you develop that beforehand, or did you find it on set?

If I hadn’t worked with Director Lee before, then I would have spent a lot of time trying to learn more about this character and to deeply understand her. But I know how he works, and he always stresses emptying my mind as an actor. He wants me not to express, but to feel the character. The preparation process for me was mostly about making sure that I get very accustomed to the lines that my character speaks, so it really feels like it’s me speaking, but it’s actually Mi-ok speaking through me.

You’ve worked with Sul Kyung-gu more than any other actor in your career, I believe. So much of the film relies on the subtleties of that relationship—did your real-life friendship and trust help?

I think I really know him well in real life, and as an actor as well. But while we were working on this project, and as he transformed into the character of Ho-seok, I discovered new facets of him. There’s always a new side of him that would surprise me, so I’m still looking forward to working with him on another project so I can discover yet another new side of him. We have this friendship and trust that we’ve built over the years, and I’m pretty sure that they helped. When you’re trying to express the chemistry of a very long relationship of a married couple, sometimes you have to make efforts to show that aspect. But we didn’t have to try too hard because we already had that trust built between us. If we do look like a real married couple in the movie, I think it’s partly thanks to that.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, this was your first time working with Cho Yeo-jeong. The dynamic between Mi-ok and Ye-ji walks a very delicate line between sisterhood and something more transactional. Did the two of you discuss that, or did you prefer to discover it in the room?

We actually didn’t talk about our characters before going into production. When you work with Director Lee, he’s sort of against the actors having too many biases or prejudices or information about characters before going into the shoot, because he believes something very novel and fresh can come out when it’s your first time being in that scene, when it’s your first time talking. I didn’t want to jinx that by speaking with her about our characters beforehand. In the beginning, my character, Mi-ok, believes that if Ye-ji films us, then that is a way of protecting my family—a way of finding hope. But as they get closer, she realizes that there is a gap between the two people, herself and Ye-ji, and the wall grows higher and higher as they get closer.

Director Lee is known for his naturalism. Did that mean doing dozens of takes until you lost the sense that you’re acting? Did scenes ever head in unexpected directions based on how you were all interacting?

Director Lee is not actually the type who shoots a lot of takes, because he doesn’t really tell us exactly what it is that he wants from a scene. What he tries to do instead is to look into the chemistry and the conversation between the actors and try to find something new from it. Instead of Director Lee saying, “Okay, let’s do the lines,” he would just say, “Why don’t we talk? Let’s talk.” He likes everything very lively and raw, so that’s how we did it, and he didn’t want us to have a lot of rehearsals. And regarding whether the direction of a scene actually changed after working—it didn’t happen, because there was no fixed direction in the beginning.

Korean cinema has obviously exploded in popularity globally over the past decade, and Possible Love is getting a huge amount of international attention. How do you view this global wave? Do you think much about reaching Western audiences?

I don’t have plans on “going global” or anything as an actor! But I do hope that Korean content and Korean cinema will be beloved around the globe going forward as well. It’s just such a joy to be able to share different stories and different emotions with people that speak different languages and have different cultures. It’s such a good opportunity for us to transcend borders, transcend language. I hope more of those opportunities will come.

Possible Love is rooted in a very specific Korean tragedy, yet the hollowing out of industrial working-class communities is something people recognize all over the world. Did you worry at all during filming about whether such a locally specific story would translate, especially on a global platform like Netflix?

When we were filming, we actually did think about how this is a very Korea-specific sort of incident. Would people around the world be able to resonate with this story? Particularly because there is no dramatic event that happens throughout the movie; it’s just about the four people and their emotions, and that’s what really brings a narrative towards the end. We were a little bit worried. But I actually realized after screening overseas that the issue of laid-off workers is not something that’s specific to Korea—it’s happening all around the world, and it is still happening in some parts of the world. I could feel that a lot of people who are not Korean, who don’t live in Korea, are resonating with the themes and the emotions that are captured in the movie. And the moon at the very end of the movie? Anybody in any part of the world can see the moon. That’s something that’s very universal.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Liam Hess is American Vogue’s senior lifestyle and weddings editor, overseeing coverage of homes, travel, food, design, parties, and weddings remotely from London. Between editing stories, he can also be found writing about music, film, books, and reviewing fashion collections in London for Vogue Runway. Previously, he has worked at ... Read More

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