The Whale with Brendan Fraser: who is Hong Chau, this Oscar-nominated actress?

Nominated against Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kerry Condon and Stephanie Hsu, Hong Chau will perhaps win the Oscar for best supporting actress on the night of March 12 to 13 for The Whale by Darren Aronofsky.

However, it was far from Hollywood that the actress grew up: of Vietnamese immigrant parents, she was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1979. Her family then settled in Louisiana, in the United States, thanks to a family reception.

After studying math, science and art at the University of Louisiana, she graduated in film at Boston University. It was on television that she landed her first roles in 2006, and we meet her in How I Met Your Mother, NCIS: Special Investigations or even CSI. From 2011 to 2013, she had a recurring role in Treme, an HBO series created by the dad of On Listening devoted to a band of musicians trying to rebuild their lives in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

In 2014, Paul Thomas Anderson offered him his first role on the big screen in Inherent Vice, a psychedelic trip to 1960s America. While continuing to shoot in popular series (Big Little Lies, Homecoming, Watchmen), Hong Chau landed in 2018 a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Female for Alexander Payne’s Downsizing. This social satire in the form of a SF story, in which humans are reduced to a size of 12 cm to fight against overpopulation, allows him to give the reply to Matt Damon.

In 2022, the actress stood out in Le Menu, a fierce satire on the world of gastronomy and more broadly on the bourgeoisie. She is the right arm of a tyrannical chef played by Ralph Fiennes. But it is especially The Whale which puts it on the front of the stage. In this camera, she is the carer and friend of Charlie, an obese man in search of redemption, played by Brendan Fraser. About this character haunted by trauma, Hong Chau says: “She’s looking for something to anchor herself to, like some people are looking for a cause or someone to devote themselves to. She genuinely loves him. But she’s, in many ways, complicit in Charlie’s worst behavior.”

About her appointment, this discreet actress admits to the New York Times to have felt a form of relief: “After years of trying, you wonder if it’s really worth trying to dedicate your life to it. But what kept me going was the illusory hope of being able to work on a film cool and weird, because those are the movies I love. I kept hoping something would happen and luckily it did.”

We will find the actress next May in Showing Up by Kelly Reichardt, with Michelle Williams.