Park Hae Il is a South Korean actor. Park Hae Il began appearing in theatre productions ever since childhood, and he first established himself on stage rather than on the screen. In 2000, he was awarded the Best New Actor award in the theatre category of the Baeksang Art Awards for his role in the play Cheongchun Yechan. His film debut was in a minor role of Yim Soon Rye’s Waikiki Brothers, however, he left a major impression in his second film Jealousy Is My Middle Name, in which he played a conflicted young man who develops a fascination/hatred for his boss, who has stolen two women from him. The film won the top prize at the Busan festival in 2002 and was released commercially the following spring.
Throughout his career, Park Hae Il has been cast in two different types of roles: innocent-looking, boyish characters, or men who hide a dark streak under a nice-looking exterior. After Jealousy, he would take on his darkest role of all in the acclaimed smash hit Memories of Murder, where he portrayed a man suspected of committing serial murder. Yet the following year, he was just as effective appearing in a romantic role opposite Jeon Do Yeon in time-travel drama My Mother, the Mermaid.
In 2005, he once again played characters of completely opposite temperament. In Rules of Dating, he plays a dirty-minded, scheming high school instructor who sets his mind on a pretty student teacher played by Kang Hye Jung, while in The Boy Who Went to Heaven he plays a young boy who suddenly finds himself an adult one day, ala Tom Hanks in Big.
The year 2006 saw him return to work with acclaimed director Bong Joon Ho in the big-budget monster movie The Host.
