Fear No Barrier for Actress Soo Ae After All

Actress Soo Ae is a "brave coward", in her own words. The 33-year-old is quiet and timid by nature but feels a fire kindled in her heart when facing a challenge. "I have lived my whole life in such a way where I become courageous at decisive moments while being always afraid of everything", she said.

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On Wednesday, the Chosun Ilbo met with Soo Ae after she wrapped up filming the TV drama "A Thousand Days' Promise". She played a woman in her early 30s who suffers from Alzheimer's, forcing the actress to show a range of emotions shifting between extremes as she evoked the daily life of a patient with dementia. Given the gravity of the role, she admitted she was afraid to tackle it even after committing to the project.

"I said I would play the role at first without really giving it a lot of thought, but I was shocked when I started carefully reading the script at home", she said, adding that "acting sometimes feels like a lonely battle".

Soo Ae said she continues to surprise herself and feels she is turning a new corner in her career, which she never expected to take off in the first place.

"I never really considered acting is my calling in life. When I debuted, I thought I would just keep acting until I had saved up enough money to rent a house".

"But I was lucky in the sense that acting brought me out of my shell. If I hadn't become an actress, I might just have lived a humdrum life, longing for the one I hadn't dared to realize by being too afraid to translate my thoughts into action".