Kwon Hae-hyo began his acting career on stage before making his big screen debut in the 1992 film Myong-ja Akiko Sonia. In 1996, he landed his first leading role in the movie The Real Man. That same year, he joined the popular MBC sitcom Three Men, Three Women. In 1998, he won Best Supporting Actor at the SBS Drama Awards for his work in Mister Q and Eun-shil. In the next years, he continued to star in numerous popular TV series such as SBS’s Successful Story of a Bright Girl in 2002 and MBC’s My Name Is Kim Sam-soon in 2005. In 2012, he acted alongside Yoo Joon-sang and French actress Isabelle Huppert in director Hong Sang-soo’s In Another Country, which competed for the Palme d’Or at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. He also appeared in several other movies by Hong Sang-soo such as On the Beach at Night Alone and The Day After, which were both released in 2017. His performance in the latter won him Best Actor at the 18th Busan Film Critics Awards. In 2020, he became part of the action horror heist film Peninsula, which is a standalone sequel to the hit 2016 zombie flick Train to Busan.

Kwon Hae-hyo studied acting at Hanyang University. He is an activist, who actively participates in various social and political movements.