Ke Huy Quan opened his Academy Awards acceptance speech by stating, “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.” When he was seven years old, his family fled Vietnam in the middle of the night. The family was initially split up to have a better chance to escape. Quan ended up in a refugee camp in Hong Kong with his father and five siblings, separated from his mother. Granted political asylum, the family was reunited in the United States a year later — but adjusting to life in America wasn’t easy. Quan remembered, “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.” Things began to look up when, by chance, he accompanied his brother to an open casting call and was handpicked by Steven Spielberg to play Short Round, the young sidekick in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). In an interview at 12 years old he said, “I think I changed a lot. I was a boat people, and now I get to make the movie.”
Although Quan experienced robust success as a child actor, he struggled to find roles as he got older. Eventually the dearth of acting opportunities led him to take a different path in the industry, attending USC film school and working as a stunt choreographer and assistant director. But at the age of 50, he felt a longing to step out from behind the camera and return to acting. Noticing that casting was becoming increasingly diverse, he decided to take a chance. For his first film role in over 30 years, as Waymond in 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, Quan won a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and the Oscar for best supporting actor. It had been an extraordinary journey. As Quan told the audience when accepting his Oscar, “They say stories like this only happen in the movies — I cannot believe it’s happening to me. This is the American dream!”
Instagram: @kehuyquan
