Stripping down to her underwear was not Yunjin Kim's biggest concern when she signed on for her sexy role in the TV2 drama, Mistresses. The actress, who first found fame in Hollywood on the TV show Lost has gone out of her way to leave her role in the sci-fi drama behind her. Although grateful for the success the show brought her, after Lost wrapped in 2010, Kim cast herself adrift from Hollywood - she moved from Hawaii back to her Korean homeland with her husband Jeong Hyeok Park, and returned back to her successful Korean-language film career. Tinseltown kept calling, but Kim was wary, adamant that in her next big TV role she would not play a character defined by her ethnicity. Mistresses she says helped her break away from Asian stereotypes.
"Hollywood is getting better for Asian women but it was really important for me to choose a role where my race wasn't the focus, says Kim, who was born in South Korea but raised in Staten Island, New York.
"On Lost it was the major focal point of my character and I knew that the next show I did I needed it to be a non-specific ethnicity, it was one of the big issues for me and something I really care about.
"This character in Mistresses is not specifically written for an Asian woman. I think the character was originally called Karen Rhodes and they changed the name to Karen Kim because of me," she adds.
