Actor You Need to Know: Go Min-si

When a talented actor like Go Min-si portrays challenging characters, her emotional display is more than just a portrayal of her feelings; it’s a manifestation of insight that she reveals through her performances. The actor’s capacity—to draw from the deep emotional wells of who she plays and express them clearly and convincingly—is what her acting is—“superior,” in a word for me.

She plays Park Gul-mi in the romance K-drama Love Alarm (2019–2021). Gul-mi is famous in her school but is conceited with bitterness and jealousy. Her personality is added to by that smear of narcissism. She’s chaotic but not awful, and as the story develops, Gul-mi matures in tandem, growing to accept things. Go Min-si is successfully Park Gul-mi in the manner that each thing she puts on screen influences the essence of the character.

Her acting takes on an individual approach in the horror thriller series Sweet Home (2020–2024), a twisted post-apocalyptic creepy drama that, throughout its seasons, unravels disaster after disaster. Go has Lee Eun-yu, an arrogant young ballerina, Lee Eun-hyuk’s (Lee Do-hyun) adopted sister, who’s given up ballet after an accident. Her presence grows increasingly apparent over the next two seasons, sticking in the mind.

In the first, the residents of the Green Home apartment complex transform into vicious creatures and mercilessly massacre people, turning Sweet Home into a place of nightmares. As the battle between humans and monsters heats up and the series climax draws near, the survivors have a final shot at protecting themselves, with Eun-yu fighting despair and futility and becoming a neohuman in the end.

A role sometimes allows an actor to own moments, like Go does in Youth of May (2021). She plays Kim Myung-hee, a young nurse but a tough woman. She has been through a lot already yet is prepared for more—to face all odds and speak for herself whenever she feels wronged; she’ll stop at nothing in pursuit of what she wants. 

Slowly but surely, Myung-hee’s hard-earned life as a family provider begins to change with the entry of Hwang Hee-tae (Lee Do-hyun). Go paints the individual in a way that beautifully conveys the self-defense instincts of a young woman, her hardships, and her emotional escape when she and Hee-tae fall in love amid the Gwangju Uprising. For their performances, Go won the Best Couple Award with Lee and the Excellence Award for Actress in a Miniseries at the KBS Drama Awards (2021).

Her ability to balance intellect and emotion—that is, to regulate feelings and adapt to the situational and social demands associated with the character—is, in my opinion, an important factor in the intense emotional range of her acting. When she uses that in her portrayals—like Do Myung-hee and Go Ok-bun in films like The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (2018) and Smugglers (2023) or Yoo Seong-a in her most recent mystery crime thriller series The Frog (2024)—her treatment of emotions turns into fine performances. 

Go Min-si does the best kind of acting when it comes to how she uses her depictions to dramatically and realistically embody various women in a range of narratives.