Get to Know “Beef” Star Steven Yeun a Bit Better With These 7 Quick Facts

Yeun was born in Seoul, South Korea on Dec. 21, 1983, where he was given the name Sang-Yeop. His parents are first-generation Americans, and he moved to North America when he was “four or five,” first living in Saskatchewan before settling in Michigan.

She’s a mini black goldendoodle.

Yeun tied the knot with professional photographer Joana Pak at the historic Paramour Estate in LA in December 2016. The couple have two beautiful kids together – a son named Jude and a daughter, whose name has not been revealed yet.

The actor graduated from Kalamazoo College in Michigan with a degree in psychology and a focus in neuroscience. His parents wanted him to become a doctor, so the plan was for him to go to med school after college. Instead, Yeun worked with The Second City and did improv before making it in Hollywood.

Before his big break on “The Walking Dead,” Yeun landed three commercials in LA and tested for a pilot on ABC that he didn’t get. He then played a small part on one of the “The Big Bang Theory”‘s flashback episodes.

Yeun starred in and executive produced “Minari,” a 2020 film about a Korean-American family that moves to Arkansas. The performance netted him a nomination for best actor, making him the first Asian-American actor to be nominated for the award – though according to a New York Times interview, he slept through the nominations announcement. While Yeun didn’t win, his costar Yuh-Jung Youn took home the award for best supporting actress.

As a child, Yeun told The Guardian in 2021, he felt like he was different people at school and at home. Because of that, he was “really drawn to Will Smith” in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” “When you think about the Fresh Prince, it was kind of that concept. He’s caught between places, just trying to be himself,” he said. In his acting roles, he’s strived to give audiences characters they can relate to like he could to Smith’s.

“Where I try and speak from as an actor is always feeling, I guess, isolated,” he said. “I warred with that for a lot of my life – of feeling disconnected from a system, a majority, or a group. I deeply wanted to connect, so I would bend and twist and break myself to try and conform.”