Lee Hwi-hyang reveals she quit acting 6 months after debut to marry a man 19 years her senior

Lee Hwi-hyang (이휘향) didn't hold back.

She appeared on episode 39 of MBN's talk show Kim Joo-ha's Day & Night, which aired August 22 at 9:40 PM and peaked at a 2.5% viewership rating. Her career started with a runner-up finish at the 'Miss MBC' talent selection competition. It almost never happened at all.

Two months after becoming a talent, she landed a role in Susa Banjang, one of the era's most-watched dramas. Six months after her debut, she quit acting to get married. Her husband was 19 years her senior and had a background as a gang member.

"I thought an actor had to be on stage to be a real actor," she said. That belief pulled her back. Pohang local theater actors proposed she appear in a work by playwright Cha Beom-seok (차범석), and she said yes. The stage run earned her both the Presidential Award and the Best Actress Award at a regional theater festival.

She turned down film offers throughout the 1980s. "I wanted to become an actor, not a celebrity," she said. Her standards remain the same: "If it's a role that fits my character, I will act. Otherwise, I want to live as an ordinary person."

Also on the episode: actor Park Sang-myeon (박상면), returning to the show for the first time. He and Lee are university seniors and juniors, seven years apart, and previously worked together in the film Family Trip (가족 여행). Park recalled first seeing her: "I wondered how she could be so beautiful. There was a radiance behind her." When she called him by his first name, "I felt like I had made it." Lee said she spotted his talent immediately. "He was so good at comic acting that I thought, 'That's excellent. He's a good actor.'" High praise from someone who's been in the industry since before most of us were born.

Episode 40 of Kim Joo-ha's Day & Night airs Saturday, August 29 at 9:40 PM on MBN.