Jang Gyu-ri
BIOGRAPHY
Jang Gyu-ri (Korean: 장규리; born 27 December 1997 in Seoul) is a South Korean singer and actor with twenty-one screen credits. She studied acting at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
She came to public view through Mnet’s survival show Idol School, where she placed ninth in 2017. That result led to her debut with the girl group fromis_9 on 24 January 2018. She left the group on 31 July 2022, when her contract expired, and in August 2022 signed with JUST Entertainment as an actor. That agreement ran until June 2024.
Her acting debut predates the group’s end by three years: the web drama Dating Class in 2019, followed by a part in tvN’s It’s Okay to Not Be Okay in 2020. The first project after she left fromis_9 was SBS’s Cheer Up, broadcast in the second half of 2022. Later television includes Player season 2 and MBC’s When the Phone Rings in 2024, where she played Na Yu-ri, a television anchor, and cameo appearances in Flex X Cop and Pyramid Game that year.
The Idol School final took place on 29 September 2017, and she performed the pre-debut single Glass Shoes at the MAMA ceremony on 29 November that year. fromis_9 debuted with the EP To. Heart, and in 2018 she also took part in the survival programme Produce 48 before returning to the group.
Her earliest screen appearance was a student cameo in KBS’s Ms. Perfect in 2017. In Dating Class she played Kang Ji-young, in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay she was Sun Byul, and in Cheer Up she played Tae Cho-hee. In 2024 she was Cha Jae-yi in Player season 2 and Choi Yeo-reum in O’pening 2024, and she made a cameo as Lee Soo-min in episode 10 of Pyramid Game. She signed with Namoo Actors in September 2024, the company that also co-produced Four Hands, Two Sonatas, and at the 2022 SBS Drama Awards she was additionally nominated for the Excellence Award in the miniseries romance and comedy category for Cheer Up.
Her awards come in a tight sequence. At the 2022 SBS Drama Awards, within months of leaving the group, Cheer Up brought her Best New Actress and Best Supporting Team. Two years later she was nominated in the same Best New Actress category at the MBC Drama Awards for When the Phone Rings, so her two award entries sit at two different broadcasters and two years apart.
In tvN’s 2026 music drama Four Hands, Two Sonatas (포핸즈) she plays Hong Jae-in, a viola major with a sharp musical ear who is looking for music that speaks to her, across all twelve episodes.
She left fromis_9 in July 2022 and won her first acting awards for Cheer Up that same year.
Her role as the violist Hong Jae-in is in Four Hands, Two Sonatas, a 2026 tvN drama classed as a bromance.
Her list has a clear overlap and a clear handover. From 2019 to 2022 she acted while still a member of fromis_9, with the web drama Dating Class and then It’s Okay to Not Be Okay on her list before the group years ended. After the contract expired in July 2022, the agency change to JUST Entertainment followed within a month, and her next credit, Cheer Up, was already on air that year. The busiest stretch came in 2024, with Player season 2, When the Phone Rings and the cameos in Flex X Cop and Pyramid Game, the same year her JUST Entertainment agreement ended in June. A singer who trained as an actor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts now plays a viola student, so the music from her first career returns as the subject of her latest role.
In my view the most interesting part of her path is how quietly the change of career happened. She did not step away from music to start again; she had already been acting in small parts through the group years, and the first part she took after leaving was a full series. What stayed with me is that each new role asks for a different kind of listening, from an anchor on air to a violist. If you are coming to her through Four Hands, Two Sonatas, I would watch When the Phone Rings next, since it gave her the nomination.
PROFILE DETAILS
- Native Name
- 장규리
- Real Name
- Jang Gyu-ri
- Nickname
- Gyuri
- Pronouns
- she/her
- Born
- (Age 28)
- Birthplace
- Seoul, South Korea
- Gender
- Female
- Western Zodiac
- Capricorn ♑
- Chinese Zodiac
- Ox 🐂
- Nationality
- Agency / Label
- Namoo Actors
- Years Active
- 2018-present
- Languages
- Korean
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