Jamie Chung dishes on new film, NBC pilot

Jamie Chung dishes on new film, NBC pilot

MARIO ANZUONI/REUTERS

Jamie Chung at the premiere of 'The Hangover Part II.'

Jamie Chung remembers vividly the dreaded call a few years ago when her strict Korean mother discovered her deepest secret:

That her little girl was actually a professional actress on “Days of Our Lives.”

“I got a call from my mom one day and she said, ‘Are you on a soap opera?’ So and so’s mom ‘told me you were on a soap opera,’ ” Chung told the Daily News, able to laugh at it now.

“I was like, ‘Yeah I’m on a soap opera. ... I said, It’s been a year, I didn’t want to tell you until I did something you would want to watch.’”

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The 29-year-old stunner’s latest movie, “Eden,” which opened in New York Wednesday, is definitely one of those roles. Chung plays a Korean-American teenager who is abducted by a prostitution ring.

The script is based on the real-life ordeal of human trafficking victim-turned-activist Chong Kim, who suffered a similar fate in the mid ’90s.

“It’s not like the movie ‘Taken,’ where your dad turns out to be a CIA agent and he kicks everyone’s ass to find you,” says Chung, who has previously appeared in more mainstream movies like “The Hangover 2” and “Sucker Punch.”

Though she’s in the make-believe business, there were days on set where the material really got to her â€" particularly a scene where it’s implied her character is gang-raped by a college fraternity.

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“The way it was shot, I never needed to be in that scene but I was hanging out in the next room and hearing them doing their countdown, chanting and cheering, and it was unbearable for me to be in the same vicinity.

“It was so hard to listen to, I had to be driven around the corner to wait for them to finish.”

These days, Chung can be found in Brooklyn, making a super-powered drama pilot for NBC called “Believe,” from JJ Abrams and director Alfonso Curon.

Living in New York during filming has been an adventure. “I’m such a Cali girl that at this point I’m just so excited to see snow,” she says.

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And slowly but surely, she’s convincing her family that this acting thing really isn’t so bad, even if it’s tougher to keep things from them now.

“My parents don’t know how to use the Internet yet, thank God,” she says. “But my uncle is really tech-savvy and he’s been printing things out.

“My dad would call me and he’d say, ‘Yeah I saw you were at a New York fashion show and you were making a little heart on the runway.’

“I was like, ‘What are you talking about and how did you get this news so fast?’”

esacks@nydailynews.com