Kim Hee-ae (Korean: 김희애; born April 23, 1967) is a South Korean actress. She is best known for her leading roles in Korean dramas such as Sons and Daughters (1992), Perfect Love (2003), My Husband's Woman (2007), How Long I've Kissed (2012), Secret Affair (2014), and The World of the Married (2020). She has received multiple acting awards including two Daesang (Grand Prize) and four Best Actress Awards for Television at the Baeksang Arts Awards. In 2020, she was selected as Gallup Korea's Television Actor of the Year.
Early life
Kim Hee-ae was born in Seoul. Her father is from Hallim, Jeju City, Jeju Island. Kim was a freshman at Hyehwa Girls' High School when she was discovered by the younger sister of one of her teachers while visiting the school. This led to her first modeling job in a commercial for a school uniform brand in 1982, which marked her entertainment debut. She also appeared in Cheil Industries commercials that same year.
Career
1983–2003: Acting debut and stardom
In 1983, Kim made her acting debut in a small role in the film The First Day of the Twentieth Year. In March 1985, she became an exclusive model for Hankook Cosmetics. Her full-fledged acting career began in 1985, after graduating from high school. After entering the Department of Theater and Film at Chung-Ang University, she starred in films such as My Love Jjanggu and Memories of Fire. Later that year, she took on leading roles in MBC Bestseller Theater - Unknowable Things and KBS Hometown of Legends, though she remained primarily known as a commercial model.
In 1986, while still a sophomore at college, she landed her first starring role in a television drama on KBS 1TV's daily drama A Woman's Heart. This was the first full-length daily drama planned by KBS since the previous year as a follow-up to Eunbit Yeoul. Industry officials noted that she was selected after beating out over 200 candidates due to her rich facial expressions and excellent acting ability demonstrated in Bestseller Theater. In the drama, she portrayed Song Da-young, a Korean woman who navigated the turbulent post-liberation era while prioritizing her devotion as a mother over her own needs.
Following A Woman's Heart, Kim focused on television dramas and emerged as a leading star of the early 1990s alongside contemporaries Chae Shi-ra and Choi Jin-sil. Among her most significant projects from this period were Beyond the Mountains (1991) and Sons and Daughters (1992), the latter of which earned her the Daesang (Grand Prize) at both the MBC Drama Awards and the 29th Baeksang Arts Awards. She also made an impact in cinema, achieving commercial success with The 101st Proposal (1993), a Korean adaptation of the Japanese television series of the same name, which garnered her Best Actress nominations at the 14th Blue Dragon Film Awards and the 32nd Grand Bell Awards.
In 1994, Kim took on the starring role in the MBC Monday-Tuesday drama Kareisky, which ran from December 19, 1994, to March 7, 1995. Written by Lee Sang-hyeon, the series anchored its narrative around Kim as Seong Nam-yeong, the central character whose journey drives the story. Her character searches for her lover, Yoon Sang-gyu, who fled to the Soviet Union due to unavoidable circumstances, while portraying the severe hardships faced after the family was forced to relocate to Central Asia. Adopting the Russian name Galina in later episodes, Kim's character ultimately became a maternal figure to Yoon's children following the death of their mother, culminating in a final scene where an aged Nam-yeong reunites with Yoon. For this performance, Kim received a Best Actress (TV) nomination at the 31st Baeksang Arts Awards in 1995.
Kim subsequently starred in the television series Love and Marriage, written by Kim Ji-soo and featuring an ensemble cast that included Kim alongside Kim Hye-soo and Lee Young-ae. Her performance earned her a nomination for Top Excellence Award for Actress at the 1995 MBC Drama Awards, followed by a win for Best Performer in the TV Actress category at the 8th Korea Broadcasting Producer Awards in 1996. Following her marriage that same year, she entered a three-and-a-half-year hiatus from acting.
She made her entertainment industry comeback in April 1999 with the MBC daily drama Only One You, after which she suspended her acting career once again.
2003–2009: Hit dramas
Following her hiatus, Kim drew widespread praise in 2003 for two consecutive hit dramas. In Wife, she played a woman whose husband vanishes and reappears years later as an amnesiac with a new family, earning her the Best Actress award at the 39th Baeksang Arts Awards. This was followed by renowned screenwriter Kim Soo-hyun's dramas Perfect Love, where her portrayal of a devoted wife and mother diagnosed with a terminal illness won her another Daesang at the 40th Baeksang Arts Awards. She worked again with Kim a year later in Precious Family (also known as Letters to My Parents), playing a woman who marries into a rich family who treats her badly after she gives birth to a baby with autism. Kim next starred in the melodrama Snow Flower.
Her third collaboration with Kim Soo-hyun was 2007's My Husband's Woman, but unlike her previous saintly characters, this time she was cast against type as a sexy, worldly woman having an affair with her best friend's husband. The adultery drama was a hit with a peak viewership rating of 38.7%, and Kim yet again won the Daesang at the Korea Drama Awards and the SBS Drama Awards.
2010–2012: Hiatus, Midas, and Sister Over Flowers
Afterwards, Kim went on a brief hiatus, during which she continued to appear in commercials and magazines, gaining a reputation as a style icon by inspiring middle-aged Korean women to embrace younger and edgier fashion trends.
Kim returned to acting four years later with Midas, starring as a wealthy chaebol heiress who fosters greed and ambition in a young lawyer. She then won Best Actress at the 49th Baeksang Arts Awards for her portrayal of a housewife increasingly stifled by her husband's obsession with status, who finds herself falling for her son's dentist in How Long I've Kissed, one of the inaugural dramas of the new cable channel JTBC in 2012.
The year 2013 marked Kim's first regular appearance in a reality show with Sisters Over Flowers, created by director Na Yeong-seok and screenwriter Lee Woo-jung as a spin-off of Grandpas Over Flowers. In the program, she joined Youn Yuh-jung, Kim Ja-ok, Lee Mi-yeon and Lee Seung-gi go on a backpacker tourism trip around Croatia and Turkey.
2014–2019: Return to the big screen and continued success
In 2014, Kim returned to the big screen after a 21-year absence in Thread of Lies, a film adaptation of Kim Ryeo-ryeong's novel Elegant Lies about teen bullying which leads to a young girl's suicide. Kim said she accepted the project because the script was "faultless" and she felt empathy for the characters, and one review described her performance as "excellent as the grieving mother [...] understated but somehow believable, touching and honest." For this role, Kim earned her Best Actress nominations at both the 35th Blue Dragon Film Awards and the 50th Baeksang Arts Awards.
That same year, Kim reunited with the writer and director of How Long I've Kissed in Secret Affair, about an art foundation director who embarks on a passionate affair with a poor but talented pianist 20 years her junior. Her acclaimed performance earned her multiple accolades, including the Top Excellence Award for Actress in a Miniseries at the 3rd APAN Star Awards and Best Actress at the 9th Seoul International Drama Awards, along with a nomination for Top Excellence Award for Actress at the 7th Korea Drama Awards.
She next played the muse of real-life folk music group Twin Folio in the 2015 film C'est Si Bon, named after a music lounge located in Myeong-dong which was famous in the 1970s and 1980s for its live performances. She returned to the small screen with the…