When Lee Byung-hun Made Toronto ‘Magnificent’

Actor Lee Byung-hun will be front and center at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where he’ll not only accompany his latest film, Park Chan-wook’s comic thriller No Other Choice, but will also be honored with one of the fest’s Tribute Awards.

But the fact that Lee had made the jump from being one of South Korea’s most prominent leading men to international stardom was already in evidence in 2016 when he visited Toronto as part of the starry and diverse cast — including Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke and Chris Pratt — that director Antoine Fuqua assembled for his remake of The Magnificent Seven, which opened that year’s festival.

Explaining why he’d cast Lee, Fuqua said he’d been impressed by his performance as a hitman on the run in 2005’s A Bittersweet Life, and the moment they met in person, he knew he wanted him for his neo-Western. “He’s just so cool, and he has a great sense of humor, too,” Fuqua said.

In the film, Lee’s and Hawke’s characters are traveling companions, and as Lee made his way along the red carpet, he said that they’d developed a special rapport: “Being a best friend with Ethan’s character — I liked that the most.” When the cast reassembled for a festival press conference, though, Lee seemed to be having second thoughts. “We got close very naturally on set,” he said, adding that his wife, actress Lee Min-jung, is a Hawke fan. Lee said that when he invited her to the set, “I’ve never seen her so happy. … So I love him,” he joked, “and at the same time I hate him.”