K-drama star Park Shin Hye says her new movie Heart Blackened pushes her limits

South Korean actress Park Shin Hye at a media conference to promote beauty brand Marmonde held at the W Hotel. ST PHOTO: DON WONG

SINGAPORE - South Korean actress Park Shin Hye says her role as a lawyer in upcoming Korean film Heart Blackened is one of her most challenging yet.

At a press event on Friday (July 21) for South Korean beauty label Momonde, she said: "This is the first production where I felt that, as an actress, I had to use new acting methods. The audience is more focused on an actor in a movie theatre as compared with when they are watching a drama at home. So the director, Jung Ji Woo, had higher expectations of me."

The 27-year-old actress, who is a brand ambassador for Mamonde, is well known for her roles in popular television dramas such as The Heirs (2013), Pinocchio (2014) and Doctors (2016).

Heart Blackened, which was previously called Silent Witness, is about a lawyer played by Park who is hired to defend the daughter of a rich man accused of killing her prospective stepmother.

The actress said that her latest big-screen project pushed her acting abilities like never before: "I really had to focus on every movement no matter how slight, on every small facial expression that I made to portray the character. For a drama shoot, it usually takes about three takes to complete a scene. But for this film, it took an average of 15 takes for even a simple scene."

Heart Blackened, which also stars South Korean actor Choi Min Shik, is expected to be released in cinemas in South Korea in November. There is no release date for Singapore at the moment.

Park, who had visited Singapore five years ago, said she loves the sunny weather and plentiful greenery here. She was also looking forward to squeezing in a meal of pepper crab into her tight schedule on this visit.

She has been an ambassador for Mamonde, a floral-inspired label, since 2014. After she was seen using the label's lip tints in the dramas Pinocchio and Doctors, those products quickly became bestsellers for the brand.

She was scheduled to attend a meet-and-greet session on Friday afternoon at VivoCity, where Mamonde has a counter at Tangs.

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