Lee Min-ho started auditioning and landed minor roles in several television shows such as Romance, Nonstop and Recipe of Love. His official debut (main) role was in an EBS series, Secret Campus (2006). Early in his career, Lee went by the stage name Lee Min because his agency thought his birth name was too ordinary. However, as his stage name was pronounced and written in the same way as the Korean word "imin", which means "immigration", he later said it was difficult to find himself in internet search results. He eventually went back to using his original name.
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| Park Du-hyun (Secret Campus 2006) |
In 2006, his acting career was put on hold for a year following a serious car wreck, which occurred while riding in the back of a car with fellow actor Jung Il-woo. Their two friends riding in the front seat were killed instantly. Lee was severely injured and spent several months bedridden. Upon recovery, Lee received his first leading role in the high-school drama Mackerel Run in 2007, but the series was reduced to only eight episodes due to low viewership ratings. In 2008, he appeared in various roles on television dramas Get Up and I Am Sam and two movies, Public Enemy Returns and Our School's E.T.. During the shooting of the latter, he became good friends with actor Kim Su-ro. Kim later gave him praise on a variety show called Win Win: "I recognize a star when I see one. When I was doing Our School's E.T., I knew that Lee Min-ho would become one of the top actors in the country".
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| Cha Gong-chan (Mackerel Run 2007) |
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| Min Wook-gi (Get Up 2008) |
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Heo Mo-se (I Am Sam 2007)
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Oh Sang-hoon (Our Schools E.T. 2008)
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