Who Is T.O.P? 5 Facts About Squid Game's Thanos Actor

Whether you know him from "Squid Game" or you have been a fan of his music since BigBang hit the charts, T.O.P has scored a lot of American press attention for his recent acting turn. If you're a new fan who missed his debut as a musician and you only know him as Thanos, you may not know that there's a lot of other things he's accomplished during his short life, including establishing a career for himself outside of the band and coping with some seriously controversial behind-the-scenes situations.

Here, we'll reveal where he got his rap nickname, why he plans on sailing among the stars someday, and how his acting resume is much deeper than you may think. We'll also tell you all you need to know about the difficult training he underwent to play Thanos and prepare for the tough and unpredictable world of "Squid Game." Here are five incredible facts about T.O.P that fans need to know.

Naturally, T.O.P's real name is much more mundane. He was born Choi Seung-hyun, but performed under a completely different name, Tempo, before striking it big with BigBang. After becoming a part of BigBang, he earned the nickname T.O.P from SE7EN, his mentor. The name is meant to imply that he's at the peak of his profession, marking out T.O.P as the best rapper in the K-pop game. 

The name switch was a prescient one, as BigBang went on to sell more than 5 million records. T.O.P later put out a rap album with G-Dragon (a fellow BigBang member and a childhood friend of his) under the joint name GD & TOP. There are conflicting reports about whether or not they are still friends today, but there's no doubting that T.O.P left a mark on the world of K-pop.

If you think "Squid Game" is T.O.P's first acting appearance, you'd be wrong. Prior to the Netflix show, he had established himself as a K-drama actor and had already appeared in multiple movies. He made his acting debut in "I am Your Teacher," a 16-episode K-drama, in 2007. He then played a character called Vick in the mystery thriller "Iris," which branched off into its own movie in 2010. His success in "Iris" seems to have inspired him to try out more dramatic roles, such as Oh Jung-Bum in the historical drama film "71: Into the Fire," the story of some young soldiers trying to protect a middle school during the Korean War. 

From there, T.O.P appeared in the films "Commitment," "Tazza: The Hidden Card," and the pulse-pounding "Out of Control," in which he plays a Korean Interpol agent trying to help his ex (a Chinese actress and martial arts expert) after she gets caught up in a terrorist plot while attending the Berlin Film Festival. T.O.P's ability to slide from comedy to action to pure drama proves that he's got some acting chops — any accusations that he lands roles on name recognition alone are unfounded. New fans who have found him via "Squid Game" definitely have a lot of other projects to try out if they want to see more of T.O.P's acting work. 

T.O.P found himself in a dark place after he was charged with marijuana possession (culturally verboten in South Korea) and essentially blacklisted in 2017. He paid heavily for the indiscretion with a suspended ten-month prison sentence, which was handed down not long after he almost overdosed on prescription meds. "He was performing mandatory military service as a policeman when he was found unconscious at his station," the BBC reported, adding that his reps confirmed that "the singer was suspected to have overdosed on benzodiazepine, a range of prescription tranquilisers used to treat anxiety, among other conditions."

When his sentence was served, T.O.P announced his retirement from the entertainment industry and fell off the map until his "Squid Game" casting. "For the past seven years, I have lived almost isolated from society, spending most of my time at home and in my music studio," he told The Korea Times after his involvement in the Netflix show was announced. "So I just kept working on music in the dark and the reason I did that was not for any other reason, but because music was the only place where I could breathe, when I was composing music and standing in front of the microphone. I think I made music to survive."

His choice to step back into the acting game at the urging of "Squid Game" creator Hwang Dong-hyuk was accompanied by much controversy in the South Korean press. Rumors that Lee Jung-jae got him the part circulated, which were swiftly denied. "Some of the reports claiming actor Lee Jung-jae was involved in the casting of 'Squid Game 2' are not true," his reps said in a statement (via All K-pop). "The casting of a project is up to the director and production company." When the season was released, fans were critical of T.O.P's acting and named Thanos the show's worst new character.

In spite of the drama surrounding his return to acting, or perhaps because of it, T.O.P was very dedicated to his role in "Squid Game," even attending an action school to get ready for the shoot. Unfortunately, despite all this prep, T.O.P fractured a rib during one scene — but decided to power through. The injury happened during the scene in which Thanos and Lee Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) get into a fight in a bathroom and T.O.P's character ends up getting stabbed with a fork.

Im revealed what happened when he sat down for a chat with StarNews in Seoul. "Both of us were completely absorbed in the scene," he said (via Koreaboo). "While we were shooting, we even ended up getting a little bit airborne. Just a little. But in the process, Seung-hyun fractured his rib. Honestly, it was [a] heroic effort through injury." This is just one of the many behind-the-scenes Thanos moments that make us love the character even more.

One obscure fact about T.O.P is that he wants to go to space and almost made it to the stars as a civilian astronaut. He joined the DearMoon project launched by Yusaku Maezawa, which would have taken the Japanese billionaire into space on a flight chartered by SpaceX. T.O.P was among a group of non-astronauts who volunteered for the project. DJ and producer Steve Aoki, content creator Tim Dodd, entrepreneur Yemi A.D., photographers Rhiannon Adam and Karim Iliya, filmmaker Brendan Hall, and actor Dev Joshi would have joined T.O.P, who said: "I have always fantasized about space and the moon since I was young, and I cannot wait to go to space."

Unfortunately, the space flight fell apart over time. While it was announced that the crew would be taking off on a Starship vessel to the moon in 2023, Maezawa ended up canceling the flight in 2024. Why? A statement posted to the DearMoon website read: "Arrangements were being made with SpaceX to target the launch by the end of 2023. Unfortunately, however, launch within 2023 became unfeasible, and without clear schedule certainty in the near-term, it is with a heavy heart that Maezawa made the unavoidable decision to cancel the project." Time will tell if T.O.P will ever make it into orbit.