Her turn as Japanese anarchist Kaneko Fumiko in Anarchist from Colony swept Korea’s new actress prizes, and her lead role in independent feature Our Body, which bowed in Toronto, earned her Busan International Film Festival’s Actress of the Year honor in 2018. By her own count, two films brought her 14 awards in a single year when she was around 30 years old.

“Some years passed, and I put the trophies in the cabinet. I didn’t want to have them displayed because whenever I saw them displayed somewhere, I kind of felt pressure,” Choi tells Variety. “I felt like I had to prove something to show them that I was worth it.”

The actress describes a psychological burden that accompanied her early triumphs, one that threatened to define her entire career by its opening chapter. The weight of expectation became heavier than the trophies themselves, creating an internal pressure that overshadowed the joy of recognition. Rather than celebrating her accomplishments, she found herself trapped by them, measuring every subsequent role against an impossibly high standard set before she reached her mid-thirties.

The Dark Side of Early Recognition

“I felt that being successful at a young age can do some bad things to you. It didn’t make me feel proud, but it actually kind of made me feel crestfallen because I felt like I had to reach a height that goes beyond those awards,” she says.

What followed was a stretch she describes candidly: more independent films, Korean TV series that “flopped really badly” and film A Girl with Closed Eyes with Kim Minha that still has no release date two years after its Busan premiere. Through all of it, she was waiting for Bedford Park, the film that would eventually screen at Sundance and mark her return to international attention.

The lean years tested her resolve and forced a reckoning with the meaning of success in an industry notorious for its fickleness. Projects failed to find audiences, releases stalled indefinitely, and the actress who once swept awards ceremonies found herself navigating the unglamorous reality of a working performer’s career. Yet this period of struggle would ultimately reshape her relationship with her craft and her definition of achievement.

Return to Busan in a New Role

Choi is now back in Busan in a different role, sitting on the seven-member jury for the festival’s competition section, which is only in its second year. Zhang Yimou presides over a panel that also includes Bi Gan, Kei Ishikawa, July Jung, Vietnamese producer Tran Thi Bich Ngoc and Kazakh actor Samal Yeslyamova. Bedford Park is also in town, screening in the Flash Forward section.

The festival runs through October 15, bringing the actress full circle to the venue that honored her nearly a decade earlier. At the jury’s press conference on October 7, Choi described the job as a learning experience she accepts with its weight. Her perspective has shifted dramatically from the young performer who once felt crushed by recognition to a seasoned artist embracing the opportunity to evaluate others’ work alongside masters of the craft.

“I don’t have the pressure that I need to prove anything to anybody,” Choi says of returning as a juror. “I’m kind of feeling like a student trying to learn from all these films that I’m going to be watching alongside amazing people like Zhang Yimou and Bi Gan.”

A New Yardstick for Cinema

Her yardstick for the competition comes from Asghar Farhadi’s idea that a good film begins once the audience leaves the cinema. Two days before heading to Busan, she watched Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, starring her friend and stage partner Jeon Do-yeon, on the big screen with her father. Outside the theater, the pair argued over whether the film’s final shot of a full moon offers hope.

Her father read the title as a paradox pointing to an impossible love, while she saw the opposite interpretation. The debate itself validated Farhadi’s philosophy, demonstrating how powerful cinema extends beyond the screen to spark genuine human connection and intellectual engagement. This approach to evaluating films reflects Choi’s maturation as an artist, prioritizing lasting impact over immediate spectacle.

Looking Beyond the Screen

The actress is also preparing to adapt an award-winning French play for the stage and, eventually, the screen, though specific details about the project remain under wraps. The venture represents her expanding creative ambitions beyond acting alone, allowing her to shape narratives from conception through execution. While the French play has earned recognition in its original form, Choi aims to bring her own cultural perspective and artistic vision to the adaptation process.

This new chapter in her career reflects a fundamental shift in how she approaches her work and measures success. The trophies that once weighed her down now sit quietly in their cabinet, neither hidden in shame nor displayed as validation. They represent a moment in time rather than a permanent definition of her worth as an artist or person.

Choi’s journey from hiding her awards to serving on one of Asia’s most prestigious film festival juries illustrates the complex relationship between recognition and artistic growth. Her candor about the “bad things” early success can bring offers a counterpoint to industry narratives that frame rapid ascent as purely positive. The years of struggle between her initial breakthrough and Bedford Park were not wasted time but essential to developing the perspective she now brings to evaluating cinema and creating it.

As she watches competition films alongside Zhang Yimou and debates their meanings with fellow jurors, Choi embodies a different kind of success than the one that brought her 14 awards in a single year. This success is quieter, more sustainable, and rooted in continuous learning rather than constant validation. The actress who once felt crestfallen by her trophies has discovered a more fulfilling measure of achievement.

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