Yoo Ji-tae

Yoo Ji-tae is one of those Korean actors who doesn't need to do much to command a scene — he just walks in and the room temperature drops. I first locked onto him as the villain in Oldboy (2003), and honestly that performance alone would've been enough to cement his reputation; he brings this eerie, coiled-spring menace that never tips into cartoonish. What I find genuinely impressive, though, is that he didn't ride that one iconic role — he kept diversifying across film, TV, and stage, then stepped behind the camera as a director too. A Chung-Ang University grad who started as a fashion model, he has that rare combination of striking presence and real craft underneath it. He's not the flashy self-promotional type, which somehow makes every project he picks feel considered and worth watching.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Yoo Ji-tae

Name (Japanese)

ユ・ジテ

Reading

ゆ・じて

Born

April 13, 1976 (age 50)

Origin

Seoul, South Korea

Occupation

actor / film actor / stage actor / television actor / film director

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Dragon

High school

Whimoon High School

University

Chung-Ang University

• Official sitehttps://www.yoomovie.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/jt_db/
• Xhttps://x.com/youjitae
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoo%20Ji-tae
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A6%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%86
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q489475

Tags

• actor
• film actor
• stage actor

Last updated

September 28, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.