Baby driver
Teen actress Lee Re shows off impressive driving skills in zombie flick, Peninsula.
IF the teenager with the impressive driving skills in South Korean film Train To Busan: Peninsula
seems familiar, well, that’s because she has been acting in films and TV series since the age of six.
Only now, at 14 – with short hair and tough demeanour as Jooni in the zombie thriller
Peninsula – the former child actress looks a lot more grown up.
Her most recent memorable role was in the 2018 series
Memories Of The Alhambra,
headlined by Hyun Bin and Park Shin-hye.
The then 12-year-old Lee Re played the spunky younger sister to Park’s character in the popular series, and stole the show from the two leads.
Lee Re also appeared as the younger version of Lee Sungkyung’s character in last year’s movie Miss & Mrs Cop.
In Peninsula, Lee Re portrays a girl who grew up a new world filled with nasty zombies and cruel militia. Thanks to this changed environment, Jooni has learned how to fend off zombies (she uses cars!) to ensure she and her family members – Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyun) and Yu-jin (Lee Ye-won) – stay alive for another day.
In an interview transcript provided by GSC Movies, Peninsula
director Yeon Sang-ho said this of Lee Re: “From my first meeting with Lee Re, I knew she would be a perfect fit with the character I was thinking of.
“Needless to say, I am satisfied with the end result. She looks really great in the film.
“Not only was she able to carry out all the action sequences, she’s also very talented in portraying emotions.”
Peninsula is set four years after the events in Train To Busan.
In that 2016 film starring Gong Yoo, the zombie outbreak was shown on a train from Seoul to Busan. During that time, the entire Korean Peninsula has become a zombieland.
The actress described Jooni as someone capable and strong, as she ably takes out zombies with her car, and at the same time, a warm-hearted youngster who looks out for her family.
In the transcript, Lee Re talked about the challenges of working on a zombie flick.
“When it comes to acting, a lot of it comes from your own experience.
“For this movie, there wasn’t much that I could draw from. So, I was concerned whether I could express everything the way that I wanted to.
“I would say from start to finish everything was quite difficult.
“However, thanks to my co-stars here (Gang Dong-won and Junghyun), we really had great energy on the set and so I’m very grateful to both of them.”
Luckily, too, she got a great piece of advice from the director at the start of filming.
Lee Re shared: “As I knew exactly how I wanted to portray the character Jooni, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself. However, director Yeon told me not to be too hard on myself and that really helped me to kind of do away with my own internal greed of wanting to do better.
“And I think, at the end of the day, that led to better acting, so I’m very grateful.”