The name of the actor born in Vietnam Ke Huy Quan (who is currently 51 years old) returned to the big scene of the film industry in March of this year. It was after he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his participation in the multi-award winning film “Everything, everywhere, at the same time.” However, it is not the first success that the Asian actor has starred in, nor is it the first role for which he remains (and will remain) in the great history of cinema. In fact, his story is quite intriguing.
And it is that the actor rose to fame in 1984, being just a 13-year-old boy and for his stellar participation in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Perdition”, the second film in the adventure saga starring Harrison Ford and directed by Steven Spielberg with production by George Lucas. But, in addition, he also starred in a jewel of 80s cinema. The detail is that, prior to his success in “Everything, Everywhere, at the Same Time”, Ke Huy Quan he spent almost 20 years away from industry and public life. He knows his story.
The tough and incredible story of the actor who rose to fame as a child in “Indiana Jones” and won an Oscar in early 2023
Ke Huy Quan was born in 1971, in Vietnam. It was in the middle of the war in that small Southeast Asian country against the United States, in an extremely conflictive context that forced him and his family to flee those lands in 1979, heading for refugee centers located in other countries. . The family split in two and they did not all travel to the same destination at first, so they only managed to meet again when they were in the United States. By then, Quan was already a child and, although he did not imagine what fate would bring him, the second part of “Indiana Jones” began to take shape and, without agreeing, the paths of the film franchise and the life of the Vietnamese boy began to head towards the same point.
In United States, Ke Huy Quan He suffered cruel discrimination and racism as a child born in Asia, more precisely in the country with which he had faced a war with what was now his new homeland. In 1983, at the age of 12, the then child participated -almost by accident- in a casting for “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Perdition”. And there he was selected to give life to the likeable Short Round, the inseparable companion of Doctor Jones in that second film.
With the role in this new film about the adventures of “Indiana Jones“, the life of Ke Huy Quan Complete change. So much so that in 1985 he was one of the children chosen to star in another cult classic from the 80s, “The Goonies.” At present, this tape has a legion of fans more valid than ever.
After the success in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Perdition” and in “The Goonies”, Quan had other minor participations in less popular series and movies. But racism and discrimination -increasingly noticeable- left him out of many other possibilities. And he decided to resign from the idea of being an actor, to change it for another passion -always within the cinema-: being an assistant director or of fight scenes in action movies.
In 2018, 34 years after the second film of “Indiana Jones” and 35 years after “The Goonies”, Ke Huy Quan he felt again that he was ready to return to acting. This is how, also after appearing in a casting, Quan got the role for “Everything, everywhere, at the same time”. And the rest of the story is already known.
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Indiana Jones: the boy from “The Temple of Doom” who disappeared for 20 years and got something incredible