Playing one of the most intriguing figures in the smashing TV series Squid Game, South Korean actor Oh Young-soo received his very first Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role on Television. His character, Player 001, is an elderly man with a brain tumor who seems to prefer the mortal dangers of a brutal game to the routine of the outside world. Needless to say, he turns out to be one of the biggest surprises in a series that took over the world and our imaginations.
His popularity shot up instantly. Case in point: he joined Instagram six days after Squid Game premiered on Netflix and, in a mere three months, his audience grew many folds to 119,000 followers. Known globally as a scene-stealer called “the Old Man from Squid Game,” Oh Young-soo was born in October of 1944, in Kaesong. This was before the 38^th parallel line was drawn across the Korean peninsula. Soon after the partition, his family moved to the southern city of Paju.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest stage actors in South Korea, Yeong-su started acting on stage in 1963. Being a member of the National Theater Company of Korea from 1987 to 2010, he won the Dong-A Theatre Award (1979), Baeksang Arts Sward (1994), and the National Theatre Association of Korea (2000) for Best Actor.
He has appeared in over 200 stage productions, including A Streetcar Named Desire, The Merchant of Venice, Faust, King Lear, and Father and Sons. In 2021 it was announced that he will play Sigmund Freud in Mark St. Germain’s play Freud’s Last Session.
Young-soo is mostly known to global audiences for his role in the 2003 movie Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring, directed by Kim Ki-duk. It might be natural to assume that Yeung-su’s career will enter a new stage, following the global success and recognition of Squid Game.