Choi Woo-shik

Choi Woo-shik is a Canadian actor based in South Korea who has earned international recognition for his performances in acclaimed feature films and television series. Born on March 26, 1990, in Seoul, South Korea, he is the younger of two sons. At ten years old, he relocated to Vancouver, Canada, with his family, where he spent a decade and attended high school at Pinetree Secondary School. Fluent in both English and Korean, he also goes by his English name Edward Choi and the nickname Eddie. In 2010, while attending Simon Fraser University, he was permitted by his parents to travel to South Korea for an acting audition, leading to his screen debut. To reacquaint himself with his Korean heritage, he enrolled at Chung-Ang University to major in cultural studies.

Choi made his professional debut in the 2011 period television drama The Duo. He subsequently held supporting roles in crime series such as Special Affairs Team TEN—playing detective Park Min-ho, a role he reprised for a second season in 2013—alongside appearances in Rooftop Prince, You Are My Destiny, and Pride and Prejudice. He made his feature film debut in 2013 with supporting roles in Flu and Secretly, Greatly. In 2014, Choi took on his first leading role in the independent coming-of-age film Set Me Free, portraying a student named Young-jae. His performance earned strong critical acclaim and several honors, including Actor of the Year at the Busan International Film Festival. That same year, he played a hacker in the action comedy Big Match, followed by lead roles in the 2015 romantic comedy series Hogu's Love and the anthology feature film In the Room.

His global profile expanded significantly following his role as a high school baseball player in the 2016 zombie blockbuster Train to Busan, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and grossed over $93.1 million worldwide. He then appeared as a truck driver in Bong Joon-ho's action-adventure feature Okja, marking his first project with the director. Over the next two years, Choi joined the casts of films including The Princess and the Matchmaker, Monstrum, and the 2018 action feature The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion, in which he departed from his usual image to play a dark assassin known as the Nobleman.

In 2019, Choi reunited with Bong Joon-ho for the black comedy thriller Parasite, starring as Ki-woo, a young man who schemes to get his impoverished family hired by a wealthy household. Parasite became the first South Korean film to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes and went on to win four Academy Awards, becoming the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture. The cast received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, and Choi performed the end-credits song "Soju One Glass," which made the shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

In late 2021, Choi returned to television as the lead in the drama series Our Beloved Summer, followed by his role in the 2022 feature film The Policeman's Lineage. After his contract with Management SOOP expired in April 2023, he joined the agency Fable Company. His recent credits include the 2024 film Wonderland, the 2024 webtoon-based crime series A Killer Paradox, and the 2025 series Melo Movie.