The year she turned 20, she debuted in MBC’s 7th open recruitment of TV actors. In 1999 she played Haman-daek in MBC’s Hur Jun. In 2001 she won a portrait rights suit. In 2002 she played Yu-jin’s mother in KBS2’s Winter Sonata. In 2005 she played a mother who abandoned her child in KBS2’s My Rosy Life, and Herald Business reported that her short part drew praise as worthy of an acting grand prize.
The breakthrough yearThe year she turned 51, she was in Infamous Chil Princesses. Hankyoreh pointed to her run of mother roles since Autumn in My Heart and called her “the nation’s mother” and “mother of Hallyu stars” around this time.
In 2007 she played a character tangled up as in-laws in SBS’s First Wives’ Club. In 2008 she won best supporting actress at the Grand Bell Awards for Open City. In 2009 she won best supporting actress at the Blue Dragon Film Awards for Thirst.
In 2012 she won best supporting actress at the Grand Bell Awards for Chewing Gum in The Thieves. In 2013 she also won best supporting actress for The Thieves at the Film of the Year Awards. She went on TV that year and said her buffet business in her forties had failed and she had borrowed from loan sharks. In 2014 she served as an ambassador for Pope Francis’s visit to Korea.
In 2015 she won best supporting actress at the Grand Bell Awards for The Throne. In 2016 she won the Top Excellence Award for Actress at the SBS Drama Awards for Yeah, That’s How It Is. In 2017 she won the Star Award for Korean Cinema for Retrial and made a cameo as the Hell King of Sloth in Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds. In 2018 she played Bae Jeong-gil, an elderly former “comfort woman,” in Herstory.
In 2020 she played Jung Ro-sa, the mother of Jung-won (Yoo Yeon-seok), in tvN’s Hospital Playlist. In 2022 she played the Queen Dowager in tvN’s Under the Queen’s Umbrella. In 2023 she appeared in quick succession in SBS’s My Demon, the film Our Season and Netflix’s Gyeongseong Creature.
In 2024 she played Oh Mal-soon, a woman in her seventies who becomes 20 again, in KBS2’s Miss Granny. In 2025 she received the Eungwan Order of Cultural Merit. In 2026 she appeared in Netflix’s The Wonderfools, and the film Portrait of a Family opened.
Kim Hae-sook (born Dec 30, 1955) debuted in MBC’s 7th open recruitment of TV actors in 1975, the year she turned 20, and was established as “the nation’s mother” around KBS2’s Infamous Chil Princesses in 2006, the year she turned 51. She won best supporting actress at the Grand Bell Awards for The Thieves in 2012, the year she turned 57.
Ages are by calendar year (the year minus the birth year), birthdays aside.