“Squid Game” actress Lee Joo-sil has died at age 81.
Lee handed away Sunday at her household residence in Uijeongbu, South Korea, in keeping with Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo.
She was identified with abdomen most cancers in Nov. 2024, the paper stated.
Lee was beforehand identified with stage three breast most cancers in her fifties and was given lower than one yr to reside, however she obtained the all-clear from docs 13 years later.
Her funeral will likely be held at Shinchon Severance Hospital on Feb. 5.
Lee starred in “Squid Game” as Park Mal-soon, the mom of police detective Hwang Jun-ho, and the stepmother of The Entrance Man, Hwang In-ho.
She appeared within the first two episodes of Season 2, in keeping with her IMDb.
Within the Netflix present’s second season, Hwang Jun-ho joins forces with a fisherman to search out the island the place his stepbrother is working the video games.
It’s unclear if Lee will likely be within the third and closing season, which filmed earlier than her loss of life and can premiere on Netflix in June 2025.
Followers of the hit present reacted to Lee’s loss of life on social media.
“Nooo I loved her :(,” one fan wrote on X.
“May she rest in peace,” one other fan stated.
A 3rd X person wrote, “OH MY GOD NOOOOO.”
Lee began appearing in 1964 with roles in stage productions and as a voice actor.
Certainly one of her most well-known film roles was within the 2016 zombie thriller “Train to Busan,” the place she performed the grandmother of protagonist Seok-woo.
She additionally appeared in Korean drama exhibits together with “The Uncanny Counter,” “Country Diaries,” “It’s Beautiful Now” and “The Witch’s Diner.”
Netflix and “Squid Game” have but to launch an announcement about Lee’s loss of life.
Season 2 of the present premiered in Dec. 2024 and follows Lee Jung-Jae’s Seong G-un, aka Participant 456, who returns to the video games after profitable 45.6 billion in South Korean received to place an finish to them as soon as and for all.
In response to Nielsen, the present was the most-viewed sequence in a single week in 2024 with 4.9 billion minutes between Dec. 23 and Dec. 29, Selection reported.
“Squid Game” Season 2 additionally turned the third most-watched TV season on Netflix, behind solely “Squid Game” Season 1 and “Wednesday.”
