T.O.P: "If I Was Going to Act, I Wanted to Do It Right"

In an interview with Yonhap News, "The Alumni" star T.O.P revealed that he's into acting not for the fame and fortune, but he feels he has a responsibility to take the art seriously and with meaning.

Nov 1, 2013 10:50 AM GMT

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Big Bang member T.O.P shared his thoughts about acting in a recent interview with Yonhap News.

In the interview, the singer-turned-actor revealed that he absolutely has zero interest in starring in a romance drama, which is usually the initial training ground for idols who want to pursue acting.

“When an idol acts, there could profit in it for them. There are a few idols out there who act for the sake of fame. But I don’t want to [act] for either of those reasons. There’s the argument that it would be far more profitable to shoot as many dramas as possible, but I have no desire to do that. I didn’t want to be categorized with everyone else who were doing melodramas, so I avoided any projects that contained that sort of subject matter. I don’t want to do something just because everyone my age is doing it, especially if it doesn’t have any depth to it.”

T.O.P also shared that he wants to take acting seriously, even though as a child he’s only ever dreamt about being in the music business. “I have always liked movies a lot, but since music was all I had ever known, I never dreamt about becoming an actor. I had such a great time filming ‘Iris’ and ‘Into the Fire’. But when I received several awards for ‘Into the Fire’, I felt the need to be more responsible. I thought to myself—if I was going to act, I wanted to do it right.”

His drive as actor basically explains why T.O.P took a lot of time weighing things just to make sure he landed the right movie and the right role for himself. He even mistakenly thought that “The Alumni” was a high school melodrama until he discovered that the film had more meaning to offer him. “I wanted to do a serious film. I’ve been waiting for a film like this, a film that would require me to be a serious actor. A lot of people have asked me about the numbers the movie is getting. However, I only hope that movie receives applauses for viewers instead of just gaining a high number of viewer.”

T.O.P, or Choi Seung Hyun as he is credited in some of his movies, debuted into the acting industry with the movie “Into the Fire”. For his role as Oh Jung Bum, one of the 71 students who fought North Korean soldiers in the 1950 Korean War, T.O.P received several prestigious awards including “Best New Actor” from the Baeksang Arts Awards, Max Movie Awards, and Blue Dragon Film Awards.

T.O.P latest flick, “The Alumni”, will be released in theatres on November 6.

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