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Ke Huy Quan topped off an incredible award season when he won an Oscar for his role in Everything Everywhere All At Once. This win comes 40 years after the actor first rose to fame with appearances in ’80s classics like The Goonies and Indiana Jones. But despite playing prominent roles in two major films in the 1980s, work opportunities for the Vietnamese-born actor started to dry up in the late 1980s and 1990s.
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, 51-year-old Quan detailed his reaction to learning about his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
“When I heard my name announced. I jumped and I screamed so loud.” Quan went on to add, ‘I just cannot believe it. For so many years, I’ve always loved watching the Oscars.”
So, how did Ke Huy Quan rise from living in a refugee camp to winning an Academy Award?
8 Where Ke Huy Quan Was Born
Ke Huy Quan was born in Vietnam and came to Los Angeles with his family in 1979. Quan’s mother took three of his nine siblings while he went with his father to a “makeshift refugee camp in Hong Kong”.
While accepting the Academy Award for best supporting actor, Quan spoke about his path to stardom: “My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp. And somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage.”
“I was so young. I didn’t understand why we gave up the place we called home to get on a boat in the middle of the night with 3,000 people.” Once the boat Quan traveled on arrived in Hong Kong, everyone was forced to stay onboard for more than a month.
It wasn’t any easier when he got to America. “We were refugees. Nobody wanted us … They would call us ‘fresh off the boat’. They would make fun of us when we were in school. You can imagine what that does to the mental state of a child.”
7 How Did Ke Huy Quan Find Fame?
In 1983, casting directors went to his Chinatown school in Los Angeles in search of a young Asian boy to be in a Steven Spielberg movie. 12-year-old Quan only went because his brother wanted to do. Quan originally wasn’t going to audience, but the casting director suggested he should when they saw the way he was coaching his brother.
The role ended up by for Short Round in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. “I’m always grateful to that man. Not only did he teach me so much, but he changed my life in the most wonderful way. I guess the reason why I love acting so much has a lot to do with him,” Quan told Associate Press. “I have such fond memories of that experience. That’s the reason I fell in love with acting.”
He admits he had never even seen an American film when he made Indiana Jones. “Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would end up being an actor,” he told People about the experience, “But I fell in love with it. That movie changed my life and my entire family’s life.”
6 When Ke Huy Quan Appeared In The Goonies
Just months after his role in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Quan was cast in 1985 hit The Goonies. He is still in contact with his co-stars, explaining that they had contacted him before the Oscars.
“My younger self would not know all the struggles that I went through to be here,” Quan said. “Because he was just having the time of his life being a kid, being on the set, on a pirate ship, going down a waterslide. Right before this night started, Corey Feldman, one of my Goonies brothers called.”
“I was talking to Kerri Green and of course tonight Jeff Cohen, who is my entertainment lawyer, is here tonight with me. Sean [Astin] reached back, Josh [Brolin], Martha [Plimpton]. We are always bonded. We’re family forever. Goonies never say die!”
5 Why Ke Huy Quan Struggled To Get Roles After The Goonies
After The Goonies was released in cinemas, Ke Huy Quan admits that he struggled to get roles in American films. “Well, I started at the very top, so there was no way to go but downhill from there!” Quan told CBS.
He was cast as Sam in the short-lived 1986 sitcom Nothing is Easy, before taking the role of Rick in Passenger: Sugisarishi hibi, a Japanese action film about a woman falling in love with a famous bike racer.
In 1990, Quan joined the cast of the sitcom Head of the Class. He played Jasper Kwong for a season, a transfer student in the high school sitcom about gifted kids. In 1992, he played a small role as a classmate to the teens in Encino Man, which starred his fellow 2023 Oscar winner Brandon Fraser.
The defining moment came in 1993 after he lost out on a no-name, two-line role. There sadly wasn’t enough roles for Asian actors in Hollywood.
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4 Ke Huy Quan Became A Stunt Coordinator
Ke Huy Quan showed off his martial arts abilities in the 1991 martial arts movie Breathing Fire. It’s his love for martial arts that led to him getting a role behind the scenes as a stunt coordinator.
“It was tough,” he explained. “I was waiting for the phone to ring, and it rarely did.”
In the early 2000s, Quan says he made the “very difficult decision” to step away from acting. His career as a stunt coordinator came after a chance visit to the Bamboo Plaza in Los Angeles while visiting his sister’s travel agents. By coincidence, Lethal Weapon 4 was being filmed there, and he met up with an old friend Cory Yuen.
After graduating from film school at USC, he became a successful assistant director and stunt coordinator. Yuen would call him up again and offer him a job choreographing action sequences for a film. The next thing Quan knew he was on a plane to Toronto to work on a new project called X-Men.
In a March 2022 interview with Vulture, Quan credited Lethal Weapon 4 action director Yuen for his stunt coordinating abilities. “He taught me everything that goes into choreographing a fight sequence: how to shoot it, how to edit it,” Quan explained. “It was one of the best times in my life.”
3 Why Did Ke Huy Quan Return To Acting?
Ke Huy Quan told Variety that it was actually the 2018 romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians that inspired his return to acting.
“When Crazy Rich Asians came out and I saw my fellow Asian actors up on the screen, I wanted to be up there with them. I called up an agent friend of mine, and I asked him if he wanted to represent me, and he said yes,” Quan said to the outlet.
His first role back was for the 2021 Netflix movie Finding ‘Ohana.
2 How Everything Everywhere All At Once Changed Ke Huy Quan’s Life
Everything Everywhere All at Once was the first script Ke Huy Quan read after signing with a new agent. The surreal fantasy drama, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert centres on Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese-American launderette owner who is sucked into a mysterious multiverse.
During a recent interview on The Late Late Show, Quan said he spent the pandemic “at home trying to stay safe like everybody.” But he was also “so nervous” because no other acting offers were coming in since Everything Everywhere All At Once was being held for release for so long.
After losing his health insurance, Quan realized his entire career and livelihood rested on Everything Everywhere All at Once. He called the film’s producer and asked, “Can you please tell me one thing? Am I good in the movie?” When the producer questioned why Quan would ask that, he responded: “Well, nobody wants to hire me.”
“[The producer said], ‘Ke, Just be patient. You just wait,’” Quan said. “The movie came out in March of last year and my life has changed.”
1 What Is Next For Ke Huy Quan?
Ke Huy Quan will next be seen in the Disney+ series American Born Chinese. Quan will be also seen in the second season of Marvel’s Disney+ series Loki. “I don’t think I can reveal much,” Quan told The Guardian apologetically. “To be welcomed into this vast family, this MCU universe, I’m very lucky. The last four months have been such a joy.”
He also has a role in the action-adventure The Electric State alongside Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt and Anthony Mackie.
Even after his Oscar win, Quan is concerned about what is next for his career. “I had a conversation with my agent. I’m so worried that this is only a one-time thing,” the actor admitted. He has been offered career advice by his fellow nominees.
“I attended an event recently and sat next to Cate Blanchett. I told her that I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I feel I have a responsibility to do something good, and that I don’t want to disappoint all the people that have supported me,” Quan explained.
