Ke Huy Quan’s performances as Richard “Data” Wang in “The Goonies” and Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” may be iconic within the canon of ’80s family-oriented adventure cinema, but, Quan being an Asian actor in 1980s Hollywood, those roles did not lead to as fruitful of an acting career as they ought to have.

“I didn’t grow up wanting to be an actor,” Quan revealed to The New York Times in April 2022. “As I got older, though, when I realized I wanted to do this, there were just not a lot of offers. When there was one, the role was very stereotypical, and you had every Asian in Hollywood fighting for it. By the time I was in my early 20s, the phone had stopped ringing.”

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Quan ultimately quit acting, but, since he didn’t want to step away from the film industry altogether, he decided to apply to film school at the University of Southern California, from which he graduated in 1999. In the following years, he worked as a stunt crew member and assistant director in both the United States and Hong Kong. Then, in 2018, the success of “Crazy Rich Asians” inspired him to pursue acting again. He called his agent friend and asked if he’d like to represent him; two weeks later, the offer for the part in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” came about. The rest, of course, is this universe’s history.