Last night Ke Huy Quan accepted his best supporting actor award at the Oscars for playing Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Waymond Wang is the husband of Michelle Yeoh’s launderette manager, and Quan plays him alongside multiple versions of Waymond from different universes.
Everything Everywhere All at Once scooped seven Oscars in total on Sunday, including best picture and best actress.
Quan was a child star in two huge movies in the 1980s but gave up on acting as Hollywood did not come knocking for him. Luckily, it wasn’t the end of his story.
He was overcome with emotion at the awards ceremony, saying: “My mom is 84 years old and she is at home watching. Ma, 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 Hollywood’s biggest stage. They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I cannot believe it’s happening to me. This is the American dream.”
Here’s what you need to know about his remarkable journey.
What was Ke Huy Quan’s early life like?
In the late 1970s, aged seven, Quan left his homeland of Vietnam on a crowded boat, before landing in a refugee camp in Hong Kong for a year with his father. His mother and three siblings went to Malaysia, and the family were reunited when they emigrated to the US in 1979.
Speaking to the Guardian last year, he said: “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.”
But his life was about to change. When he was 12, by chance he was given an audition to play Chinese pickpocket Short Round in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. He had gone along to the audition to support his brother but the casting director suggested he try out too. Three weeks later, Quan was on his way to Sri Lanka to start shooting the film.
“It was one of the happiest times of my life,” he recalled.
“Spielberg was the first person to put an Asian face in a Hollywood blockbuster,” he said. “Short Round is funny, he’s courageous, he saves Indy’s ass.”
He then starred as gadget-loving Data in The Goonies the following year, and went on to appear in the TV sitcoms Together We Stand and Head of the Class. However as he grew up, suitable roles never materialised and he worked behind the scenes as a stunt co-ordinator and assistant director.
“It’s always difficult to make the transition from a child actor to an adult actor,” he told the Telegraph. “But when you’re Asian, then it’s 100 times more difficult.
“If you were to take 100 scripts, there was a high probability that none of them would feature any meaningful Asian characters. A lot of the time, we were the butt of the joke.
“Your early 20s are supposed to be golden years and all I did was wait for the phone to ring.”
How did Ke Huy Quan make his career comeback?
As he approached the age of 50, he was then inspired by watching Crazy Rich Asians and decided to give his dream of pursuing acting another go.
“I remember watching that movie in a theatre three times. I cried every single time,” he said. “I cried because it was such a beautiful movie, but I also cried for a different reason – I had serious FOMO [fear of missing out]. I wanted to be up there along with my fellow Asian actors. It was really then that the idea of getting back to my roots started taking place.”
He was represented by an agent friend and two weeks later was contacted about Everything Everywhere All at Once.
It proved to be his second big break and his first Academy Award.
He told the the Los Angeles Times: “I was 50 years old when I decided to get back into acting. It took courage to give voice to this dream I’d had, a dream I had to walk away from, and I didn’t think it would find its way back.”
At the Oscars, there was a touching reunion with his former Indiana Jones co-star Harrison Ford, who presented the best supporting actor award.
In his Oscars speech, Quan went on to thank his mother “for the sacrifices she made to get me here”.
He also thanked his brother and wife – “the love of my life, who month after month, year after year for 20 years, told me my time would come”.
He added: “Dreams are something you have to believe in. I almost gave up on mine. To all of you out there, please keep your dreams alive. Thank you so much for welcoming me back.”
