Biography

Yoo Teo (born April 11, 1981 in Cologne, Germany) is a German-South Korean actor. Yoo Teo, also known by the Western name Teo Yoo, was born in Cologne on April 11, 1981 as the son of South Korean guest workers. He was a passionate basketball player in his youth, but gave it up after an injury and focused on acting. He went to the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. Yoo speaks fluent English, German and Korean. He has appeared in productions in various countries. At the beginning of his career, he had several supporting roles in South Korean films, including One on One (2014) by Kim Ki-duk. In 2015, he played one of the leading roles in the American production Seoul Searching by Korean-American director Benson Lee. The film is about young Koreans who grew up abroad and want to get to know their Korean heritage. Yoo plays Klaus Kim from Hamburg. He has also appeared in the science fiction film Equals, the Vietnamese film Bitcoin Heist (2016) and the Thai film Ruk Kong Rao (2017). In 2018, he played the lead role of Soviet rock musician Wiktor Zoi, the son of a Korean and a Russian, in Kirill Serebrennikov's Leto, which took him into competition at the Cannes International Film Festival. Yoo does not speak Russian and memorized the Russian lyrics phonetically for the role. Yoo said he considers himself Korean and has always wanted to act in South Korean films, but his Korean was not fluent for a long time. In 2019, he played the lead role in the film Vertigo alongside Chun Woo-hee. In the summer of 2024, Yoo Teo became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.