Doh Kyung-soo

Idol turned actor is usually a marketing decision, and it usually shows. Doh Kyung-soo, who sings as D.O. in Exo, took the other route. His first screen parts were small, unglamorous and in projects nobody would cast a pop star in for publicity: Cart, a drama about supermarket workers organising against their employer, and It's Okay, That's Love, which handed him a psychologically difficult supporting role on television.

The film career built quickly from there. My Annoying Brother and Swing Kids show what he actually has, which is a stillness that reads as thought rather than as blankness, plus, in the second of those, a whole physical performance built out of tap dancing. Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds and Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days put him inside two enormous fantasy blockbusters, and 100 Days My Prince did the equivalent on television.

The music never stopped running alongside it. He debuted as a soloist in July 2021 with the EP Empathy, followed by Expectation in 2023, Blossom in 2024 and the album Bliss in 2025. The recent screen work, The Moon and Bad Prosecutor and The Manipulated and Secret: Untold Melody, shows an actor moving between blockbuster and small without visible effort, which is a rarer position than it sounds.