LEE Hye-ri, better known under her mononym Hye-ri, was born in 1994. While in middle school, the money offered by her school to all contestants to a beauty contest to elect the “Queen of May” convinced her to enter, and much to her surprise she ended up in third. A manager from an entertainment agency happened to be there scouting for new talents, and in 2010 LEE was announced as one of the new recruits of the K-pop girl group Girl’s Day. Two years later, LEE moved to ...More

LEE Hye-ri, better known under her mononym Hye-ri, was born in 1994. While in middle school, the money offered by her school to all contestants to a beauty contest to elect the “Queen of May” convinced her to enter, and much to her surprise she ended up in third. A manager from an entertainment agency happened to be there scouting for new talents, and in 2010 LEE was announced as one of the new recruits of the K-pop girl group Girl’s Day. Two years later, LEE moved to acting with a first role in the drama series <Tasty Life> (2012), but her big break came quite unexpectedly in 2014 when she participated in a reality TV show, <Real Men>, in which celebrities are sent to a military training. Viewers were quickly won over by her cheerful and quirky personality, and a sequence in which she shows her drill instructor how to talk and act in an excessively cute way became viral on internet. This newfound stardom helped her receive more attention from casting directors, and she was offered more important roles in the series <Schoolgirl Detective> and <Hyde, Jekyll, Me>, but the turning point in her career was when she landed the lead role in the drama series <Reply 1988> (2015-2016). A cultural phenomenon that broke several audience records, the show also allowed LEE to be recognized as an actor, earning several accolades from television-specialized awards shows. Her popularity at that point was such that Forbes ranked her third in its 2016 Korea Power Celebrity index. She made the jump to the big screen the following year when she joined the main cast of period zombie film <Monstrum> (2017). Showing her commitment to her acting career, she is currently enrolled in the film department of Konkuk University.Less