Bae Doona (born October 11, 1979 in Seoul, South Korea) is a South Korean actress, model and photographer.
Doona Bae has become a very familiar name in Korea in a short amount of time and is widely critically acclaimed for her film and television work. “Cloud Atlas” marks Bae’s first English language film.
In 200, she was honored with a Best New Actress Blue Dragon Award for her role in “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” directed by Bong Joon-ho. Her other films include leading roles in “Take Care of My Cat,” directed by Jung Jae-un, and Park Chan-wook’s “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” which both garnered her several festival awards and the AKOFIC Best Actress Awards in 2001 and 2002. She also received a Director’s Cut Actress of the Year Award for her performance in “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” in 2002, and again in 2006 for Bong Koon-ho’s “The Host.”
Bae also played lead roles in the Japanese films “Linda, Linda, Linda,” directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita, and Koreeda Hirokazu’s “Air Doll.” For the latter, she was honored in 2010 as Best Actress at the Japanese Academy Awards, and in the same category at the Tokyo Sports Movie Awards, Takasaki Film Festival, and Japan Professional Film Awards. Already famous as a model in the Korean fashion industry, Bae made her screen debut in the film “Ring” and subsequently played the lead in the Korean TV series “The School.”
Bae made her English-language, Hollywood debut in Cloud Atlas, as Sonmi~451, a clone in dystopian Korea.She also played the minor roles of Tilda Ewing, the daughter of a slave-holder and wife of an abolitionist in pre-Civil War America, and a Mexican woman who kills an assassin who attempted to kill two whistleblowers.