Few registered in the face of Ke Huy Quan, the image of the Asian boy who conquered in films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, which catapulted him to the top of cinema as a child star in the 80s.
And it is that that boy who began his career began to fade over the years, but he managed to return to theaters as the Phoenix to the point of hanging his first oscar as best supporting actor this 2023, for his phenomenal performance in Everything everywhere at the same time.
The actor originally from Vietnam He is an example of resilience after turning the tragedies he has experienced throughout his life into a drive to achieve success.
“My mom is 84 years old and she is at home watching. Mom I just won an Oscar! My journey started on a boat, I spent a year in a refugee camp, and somehow I ended up here, on the biggest stage in Hollywood,” she said, teary-eyed, as everyone applauded. “They say this only happens in movies, I can’t believe it’s happening to me. This is the American dream! ”, He said after getting the statuette.
This was the tragic story of Ke Huy Quan, Oscar winner
behind each of his characters a man who dragged a pain from his childhood was hiding. And it is that from a very young age he had to flee his country together with his parents and his nine brothers in the face of the political crisis that his country was going through after the war in Vietnam that cornered the United States.
His family managed to reach a refugee camp in Hong Kong, where they remained for a long time in the midst of misery.
“It wasn’t very big. We had a chain link fence around the building and there were just makeshift beds next to each other. Also, guards to make sure we didn’t go out, ”she recounted some time ago.
His arrival at the cinema was a mere accident, since it was one of his brothers who attended a casting of the director Steven Spielberg and a group of producers and while he was helping him with his script they asked him if he was interested in doing it too.
Why not? Ke thought. ”The next day we received a call from Steven’s office. I went there, I walked into the room and there was George Lucas, Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg. We spent a whole afternoon together. Three weeks later, I was on a flight to Sri Lanka on one of the most incredible adventures of my life,” she told CQ magazine.
Despite the success he had achieved, trying to grow in hollywood Being Asian was not an easy task, so there were many castings and failed attempts to continue his acting career.
“It was very difficult to be an Asian actor at that time, growing up,” he said in a report that Jimmy Kimmel did for his late night show.
However, he had some roles in series like Together We Stand or Head of the Class and in half-baked movies like Breathing Fire, Passenger: Sugisarishi hibi or Encino Man.
“There weren’t many opportunities for me. It was extremely difficult for an Asian actor. In Hollywood, very few child actors make smooth and successful transitions into adult acting. It is very difficult for many, but I think it is a hundred times, a thousand times more difficult when you are Asian,” he told CQ.
It was his character like Waymond Wang the one who gave him his great moment at the age of 51, demonstrating that dreams do come true with constancy and perseverance.
“I don’t think I would have been able to play Waymond if I had been given the part 10 or 15 years ago. Looking back on my life, with all the ups and downs I had, I reached deep inside to pour my entire life into these three different characters,” she detailed.