Actors who stand out in the genre movies often end up giving a gentle smile and a round of applause to the award-winners on stage at the awards ceremony, even if they recorded the box-office success with their films. However, an unexpected event happened at the Blue Dragon Award in 2021. Ra Miran, who starred in the political satirical comedy Honest Candidate (2020), won the Best Actress Award. Taken aback by the unexpected call, she went up to the stage and opened her mouth with this sentence: “Why are you doing this to me?” All teared up herself while making the audience laugh, Ra once again proved what a great actor she was.

In her filmography filled with minor roles, supporting roles, special appearances, and cameo appearances, the comedy spy movie The Spy: Undercover Operation (2013) is the first film that made us clearly remember Ra Miran’s face. It is a situation comedy where a man, who is the best secret agent but gets weak-kneed in the presence of his wife, happens to face his wife during his mission. In the film, Ra Miran starred as a spy who boasted the best camouflage of invisibility. Her weapon was mediocrity. She played the character that no one paid attention to but actually a hidden figure that existed everywhere. The character seems to symbolize the existence of Ra Miran in Korean cinema so far. Soon after, in Director Lee Joonik’s Hope (2013), includes no sensitive scenes like violence while dealing with a child sexual abuse case, Ra played a friend who kindly embraced the pain of her neighbor, making the audience laugh and cry. The film won her the Best Supporting Actress at the Blue Dragon Award.

Ra Miran’s comic acting is an art of intuitive timing. Without the assistance of fancy lines or slapstick comedy, the actor makes the audience laugh with her perfectly mundane and ordinary character. She is one tough cookie who can do it. More and more film directors started to admire her talent, and Ra Miran starred in the comedy action Miss & Mrs. Cops (2019) as one of the two main characters. Then she took the lone protagonist in Honest Candidate (2020), carrying the entire story herself. Everything she says and does becomes comedy in her performance as a politician who cannot lie.

However, Ra Miran does not stop at being just funny but moves the movies to the realm of touching and healing as her character reflects on herself and apologizes. It also does not mean we should associate her with just the comedy genre. After all, she was the nurse who dominated the first scene of Park Chanwook’s Thirst (2009) with a grotesque atmosphere. Park Hyeeun