Yuh-Jung Youn wins Best Supporting Actress award for ‘Minari’ in 93rd Oscars

By Associated Press
WASHINGTON: South Korean actor Youn Yuh-jung,’ the feisty grandmother in “Minari”, captured greater than her grandson’s coronary heart.

Youn, a outstanding movie and TV actor in her house nation of South Korea, received the perfect supporting actress award at Sunday’s Oscars. She’s the second Asian actress to win within the class, greater than 4 many years after Japanese-born Miyoshi Umeki earned the trophy for 1957’s “Sayonara”.

In her acceptance speech, Youn was as charmingly candid as her character in “Minari”. “You are all forgiven” for what she known as the frequent mangling of her title, she mentioned, smiling. She acknowledged what she known as her “Minari” household and the formidable friends within the class.

“I don’t believe in competition. How can I win over Glenn Close,” she mentioned of her fellow nominee. She credited a “little bit of luck” for her Oscar, “and maybe American hospitality for the Korean actor”. She additionally thanked her two sons, “who make me go out and work. ….This is the result, because Mommy works so hard,” Youn mentioned, holding her Oscar aloft.

Youn teased presenter Brad Pitt, who introduced her award and whose firm was concerned within the manufacturing of “Minari”, for not visiting the set in Oklahoma. “Nice to meet you,” she mentioned, later taking his arm as she walked offstage. Pitt gave her the envelope containing her title.

The first Korean lady to be nominated for an Oscar, Youn’s victory comes one yr after academy voters snubbed the South Korean solid of greatest image winner “Parasite”.

Youn performs Soon-ja, a card-playing grandmom with a knack for swearing, who’s moved from Korea to hitch her daughter and stepson in his seemingly quixotic quest to commerce dispiriting work in California for farming in Arkansas. Soon-ja and her initially cautious grandson type an unlikely however loving bond.

Youn, making a uncommon US display look in “Minari”, captured a string of honors for the semi-autobiographical movie primarily based on the childhood of Korean American director Lee Isaac Chung.

The Screen Actors Guild and the British movie and TV academy had been amongst these honoring her efficiency in “Minari”, which earned Oscar nominations together with greatest image, director and lead actor for Steven Yuen (“The Walking Dead”).

Youn grew to become an prompt movie star in South Korea together with her 1971 debut “Fire Woman”. At the height of her profession, she married common singer Cho Young-nam and moved with him to the United States, the place he carried out at Billy Graham’s church.

Her American detour put her profession on maintain for almost a decade, till she returned to South Korea, her marriage ended and she or he resumed performing.