'I'm not too sure about myself,' Choi Woo-shik says

Despite his stardom, the actor still can't bring himself to believe the compliments

Choi Woo-shik (By4M Studio)

By any measure, Choi Woo-shik has made it.

"Parasite" made him a global name, while a string of subsequent local hits like "Our Beloved Summer" and "Would You Marry Me" turned him into Korea's baby-faced heartthrob.

Yet sitting across from him in Samcheong-dong, Seoul, on a Tuesday afternoon, you wouldn't have guessed it. Soft-spoken and unassuming, the 37-year-old comes off like a shy teenager, his gaze drifting downward and rarely holding eye contact for long.

Ask him about his strengths as an actor, and he practically flinches.

"That's the hardest question," he says. "If I actually had confidence in myself, I could just tell you, 'I'm good at this.' But I can't."

The self-doubt goes way back. When his breakout "Set Me Free" swept through awards season in 2014, Choi and director Kim Tae-yong spent the whole run convincing themselves it might have been a fluke.

"We kept telling each other, 'This isn't because we did anything special. It's timing, it's luck.' Both of us were just swaying the whole time, second-guessing everything."

Even the whirlwind of "Parasite" didn't fix it. The Oscar circuit in 2020 had him bouncing between night shoots in Korea and red carpets in LA — it all felt like a dream.

One trip, he landed completely fried, jet-lagged out of his mind, and there was Leonardo DiCaprio shaking his hand, telling him the movie was incredible. "I remember standing there thinking, is any of this actually happening?"

Negative comments still get to him. He's stopped reading them entirely. "Someone says something nice, I don't believe it. Someone says something bad, I can't let it go. So I just try not to look anymore."

His workaround is to get validation on set, then move on. "The director's okay is everything to me. If they say the take was good, that's it, I trust it. That's my anchor."

When pushed to name his strength as an actor, he eventually comes up with something. "I guess I'm good at listening? If the director tells me to try it a certain way, I'll just do it.

"But then I'll sometimes ask, 'Hey, what about this instead?' I want there to be something real in the performance.

"Maybe my strength is just that I know I have doubts, and I try to work through them anyway."

"Number One" hits theaters Wednesday.