Actor Lee Je Hoon has more than two months of military duty left to serve but he's already getting love calls from producers. In fact, some scripts have already been written with the 29-year-old actor in mind. It is said that when the actor entered the military in Oct. 2012, directors were disappointed to lose the option of casting such a rising star.
The actor has only appeared in two dramas, neither of which was a big hit, but he's impressed audiences with his roles in over 20 films. In the acclaimed film "Architecture 101," he played the young Uhm Tae Woong, acting across from Suzy Bae as the young Han Ga In.
In an interview after the film, she said that her best memory from the film was kissing him. He said he thought of her as a cute younger cousin.
Two of his films were released after he enlisted. In the 2013 comedy film "My Paparotti," he played Jang Ho, a teenage gangster." And in the mystery film "The Ethics Lesson," he was Kim Jung Hoon, a policeman.
His success is even more impressive since he started acting when he was 25, which is rather late.
He is known in the industry not only for his talent but how easy it is to work with him. He has said in the past how grateful he feels to the directors who cast him and how hard he wants to work to repay their confidence in him.
The actor trained for five weeks and then served his tour of duty in the Seoul Metropolitan Police Special Promotional Unit. On the day he enlisted, he said he hoped that some of his female co-stars would be in touch while he was serving his compulsory military duty.
"No one has told me that they were coming, but I am hoping someone will come," he told reporters outside the recruiting center. "Suzy or Girl's Generation's Yuri or my most recent co-star Kang So Ra, I would like to see all of their faces."
He's not saying whether he got those kinds of love calls. Nor has his agency, Saram Entertainment, released any statements on exactly what his post-enlistment plans are.
"I want to be an actor that makes people choose my pieces just because I'm in it," Lee Je Hoon said in an Mwave interview. "It won't be easy to become an actor that audiences trust, but trying to achieve that is making me feel even more passionate about my work."