Kim Nam-gil

Kim Nam-gil (김남길) has spent more than two decades refusing to settle into one type of stardom. He first became a mass-market obsession through Bidam in Queen Seondeok, then kept expanding through film, prestige drama, and projects that let him play with menace, grief, and dark comedy without flattening his screen image.

His modern run says plenty about his staying power. SBS's The Fiery Priest turned him into one of the era's most explosive drama leads in 2019, and he returned to that franchise with The Fiery Priest 2 in 2024. In 2025 he led Trigger for Netflix, playing Lee Do in a gun-crime thriller set inside a country usually defined by strict firearms control. He followed that with a 2026 appearance in tvN's Mad Concrete Dreams, keeping his recent filmography commercially sharp.

Off screen, Kim Nam-gil has tied his career closely to Gilstory's broader cultural and philanthropic work. That combination of lead-actor credibility, long-tail public trust, and selective project taste is what keeps him relevant well beyond nostalgia casting.