Lee Sang-hee

Read the credits in order and you can watch a career assembled out of function: "YTN Reporter", "Intensive Care Unit Nurse", "Baby's Mother", "Bulk's Wife", "Female Shaman". Lee Sang-hee, born Lee Na-ri in Ulsan in 1983, spent years taking the two-line parts that keep a Korean production believable, and she was good enough at them to keep getting the next one.

The independent films are where the actual work is. She first became known for End of Winter, then took the lead in Our Love Story as Yoon-ju, a quiet romance that asks for an enormous amount of unspoken feeling and receives it, and later played Eun-yeong in A Distant Place and Mi-ran in Mothers. Her method across all of them is stillness with something running underneath. She almost never raises her voice, which is exactly why it registers when one of her characters finally does.

Television opened the wider door. Park Sun-hwa in All of Us Are Dead, Nan Hee in The Recruit, Joo Yeong-sil in Juvenile Justice, Park Soo-yeon in Daily Dose of Sunshine, Song Young-joo in One Spring Night: more than forty credits, most of them supporting, nearly all of them recognisable on sight. She is who a Korean production calls when a small part has to feel like an entire person.