Theater and Film graduate of Chungang University, Kim Hee-sun won the Fair Face Beauty Contest in 1992 while in middle school and embarked on a career as a model for teen magazines. The next year brought with it the opportunity to feature in a Samsung commercial and then an acting debut in the TV series Dinosaur Teacher. Quickly achieving fame, she was one of Korea’s top TV stars in the mid-to-late 1990s, featuring in notable fare such as Men of the Bath House (1995), Propose (1997), Wedding Dress (1997), Mister Q (1998), which earned her top honors at the SBS Drama Awards, Sunflower (1998) and Tomato (1999). She embarked on a dual career as a film actress starting in 1997 but failed to find quite the same level of popularity as she had on the small screen.
