Ke Huy Quan, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded in front of students at Chapman University, is a fantastic actor whose journey from 1980s child stardom, in films like 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 1985’s The Goonies, to a best supporting actor Oscar nomination this year for Everything Everywhere All at Once, is nothing short of incredible.
The Vietnam-born actor was, as The Associated Press put it, “one of the most incredible faces — and voices — of the 1980s,” and as GQ noted, he was also, at the time, “one of the only visible Asian faces in any Western media, much less two of the biggest blockbusters on the planet.”
And then, for more than two decades, Quan, now 51, disappeared from the public eye — but not from the business he loved. The story of his return to acting — which has resulted in SAG, Golden Globe, Critics Choice, Gotham, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and National Society of Film Critics awards, as well as a BAFTA nomination and Independent Spirit and Oscar nominations — could be a movie itself.
To quote a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, “F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives, but he’d never met Ke Huy Quan.”
