Daniel Dae Kim

Daniel Dae Kim is an American actor born on August 4, 1968, in Busan, South Korea, to parents Doo-tae Kim and Jung Kim. His family relocated to the United States when he was one year old, and he was raised in New York City and in Easton and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Freedom High School in Bethlehem's Lehigh Valley region. He earned dual bachelor's degrees in theater and political science from Haverford College in 1990, having spent the spring semester of 1989 studying at the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. He subsequently completed a Master of Fine Arts at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1996. In 2025, Time magazine named him among the world's 100 most influential people.

Kim built an extensive early television résumé with appearances on Seinfeld, NYPD Blue, ER, The Shield, Charmed, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise, among others. He held a regular role on the short-lived Babylon 5 spin-off Crusade and recurring roles on Angel and 24. His film work during this period included American Shaolin (1992), in which he played a Shaolin monk and drew on his taekwondo training, along with minor parts in The Jackal (1997), For Love of the Game (1999), Hulk (2003), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Crash (2004), and The Cave (2005). He also portrayed Dr. Tsi Chou in the 2008 miniseries adaptation of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.

From 2004 to 2010, Kim played Jin-Soo Kwon, a Korean fisherman-turned-hitman, on the ABC science-fiction series Lost. Because the role required him to speak almost exclusively in Korean, a language he had not used regularly since high school, he undertook intensive relearning of the language. The Lost cast collectively received a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble in 2006, and Kim was individually recognized with an AZN Asian Excellence Award, a Multicultural Prism Award, and a Vanguard Award from the Korean American Coalition. He was also named one of People magazine's Sexiest Men Alive in 2005. During the same period, he provided the voice of Johnny Gat for the Saints Row video game series beginning in 2006 and voiced Metron in the final two episodes of Justice League Unlimited that same year.

Shortly after Lost concluded, Kim joined the CBS reboot Hawaii Five-0 in February 2010 as Chin Ho Kelly, a role originally portrayed by Kam Fong, becoming the first actor officially cast on the series. The show premiered on September 20, 2010, to strong ratings. Kim made his directorial debut with the season five episode "Kuka'awale" and served as a speaker at the 2014 University of Hawaiʻi commencement ceremony. He departed Hawaii Five-0 in June 2017, prior to its eighth season, alongside co-star Grace Park, following a salary dispute with CBS in which both had sought pay parity with co-stars Alex O'Loughlin and Scott Caan.

Kim's film credits expanded further with roles as Jack Kang, leader of the Candor faction, in The Divergent Series: Insurgent (2015) and Allegiant (2016). In 2019 he played Ben Daimio in the Hellboy reboot, stepping into the role after Ed Skrein departed to avoid a whitewashing controversy, given that the character is Asian-American in the source comics. That same year he appeared in Always Be My Maybe. He provided the voice of Chief Benja in the Disney animated feature Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) and appeared in Joy Ride (2023). As founder of the production company 3AD, Kim signed a first-look development deal with CBS Television Studios in January 2014, the first such deal with an Asian-American actor. Through 3AD he produced the ABC series The Good Doctor from 2017 to 2024, based on a 2013 South Korean series, and joined the show on screen during its second season as Dr. Jackson Han, chief of surgery.

On stage, Kim portrayed the King of Siam in a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I at London's Royal Albert Hall from June 12 to 28, 2009. He returned to the role for his Broadway debut at Lincoln Center Theatre, running from May 3 through June 26, 2016. His Broadway career continued with the 2024 revival of David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face, in which he played the lead role. The performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play, making him the first Asian-American actor nominated in that category. Kim's Broadway appearances span 2015 to 2024.

On June 12, 1993, Kim married Mia Rhee; the couple have two sons, born in 1996 and 2002. During the production of Lost, the family divided their time between Los Angeles and Hawaii, and Kim maintained his Hawaii residency through his years on Hawaii Five-0.