Cha Seung-won

Cha Seung-won got married in 1992 after dating his girlfriend Lee Soo-jin for quite some and welcome a daughter, Cha Ye-ni, in 2003. The couple previously had one son, Noah, who was born before Cha and Lee got married.

Cha has remained in several controversies in his personal life. A man filed a case against him in 2014, claiming that Noah was his son, from his marriage with Lee prior to her marriage with Cha. Cha fought the case for sometime saying that Noah was his biological son and he married Lee in 1989, but later admitted to lying. This resulted in Cha receiving a lot of backlash from his fans, and he publicly apologized for lying.

Cha Seung-won was born on June 7, 1970 in Gyeonggi, South Korea, and finished his early education from his hometown only. He started modelling in his late teens and at one point, he was considered the best male model in the country. When he started getting more modelling offers, he quit his education and dropped out of higher education to make a full time career in modelling.

He did photo shoots for several magazines, appeared in commercials and featured as the face of many products during his early 20s and also managed to score a number of awards during his modelling days.

In 1995, Korea Model Association honored him with the Best Male Model award and well during his peak days, he took the next logical step, to appear in films and TV.

After initial struggle, he found a small part in the sitcom ‘New York Story’ and hence, his career took off.

His debut project ‘New York Story’ did well enough for him, as he got into the limelight, mostly due to his looks. In order to stay away from getting typecast as just another pretty face, he deliberately chose unconventional roles.

He made his film debut in 1997 with ‘Holiday in Seoul’, which was a small budget art-house film featuring a multi star-cast with many inter-connected stories. The film didn’t pick up a pace at the box office and never resonated with critics as well.

Not getting disheartened, Cha then went on to appear in films such as ‘If the Sun Rises in the West’ and ‘Ghost in Love’. He played minor roles in those films and got sidelined by the main cast.

However, his breakthrough role came his way in 2000, with the film ‘Libera Me’, an action blockbuster film, where Cha played the second lead role as an arsonist. The film fared well at the box office and was also deemed as a mega critical success.

Cha followed that breakthrough success with another hit film ‘Kick the Moon’ in 2001. The comedy was a massive hit and Cha was honored with a Golden Cinematography Award for his performance, which was also his very first award.