The actor who plays Thanos in the second season of the Netflix series Squid Game is Choi Seung-hyun, who is better known by his stage name T.O.P.
T.O.P is a South Korean rapper and was a former member of the K-pop group BigBang. His casting in Squid Game 2 was met with some controversy in South Korea due to his past conviction for marijuana use.
In the show, his character is also known as Player 230 and his real name is Choi Su-bong. The character is a rapper who joined the Squid Game after getting into debt due to cryptocurrency investments and is depicted as a drug user within the game.
The director of Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk, mentioned that he specifically sought an actor who had stopped working due to drugs for the role, and praised T.O.P’s bravery in taking on a character with such similarities to his own past.