Ke Huy Quan
American-Vietnam actor and stunt choreographer
Ke Huy Quan (Chinese: 關繼威, Vietnamese: Quan Kế Huy) (born August 20, 1971), also known as Jonathan Ke Quan, is a Vietnamese-American actor and stunt choreographer who played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Data in The Goonies (1985). For his role as a naive husband navigating the multiverse in the science fiction film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), he received acclaim and won many accolades.
Quotes edit
- When you have a dream and you kind of bury it because you think it won’t come true, to see it finally come true is incredible.
- For the longest time, all I wanted was just a job. Just an opportunity to act, to show people what I can do. This movie, ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ has given me so much beyond anything I could have ever asked for.
- There are so many people out there who doubt themselves, who have dreams they’ve given up or didn’t think would ever come true. To those people, I hope my story inspires them.
- I grew up with very traditional Chinese family values. Since I was a little kid, my parents taught me to internalize the emotions that we have instead of projecting them outward. It’s very contradicting to what an actor is. With all these internalized emotions, I just needed to spend a long time with myself and bring all of that out.
- When I walk on a movie set, knowing how difficult it is to get to have this opportunity, I’m always grateful. I didn’t think I would have this amazing second act as an actor in my early 50s, and I hope my story inspires someone to not give up on their dreams.
- When I got back into acting, I decided I was going to go back to my birth name – that was really important to me.
- I noticed Asian actors were getting more opportunities, and I began to harbour this dream of getting back into acting, but it took a lot of courage to give voice to that dream. One day I decided: if I don’t do this, I will regret it.
- Everything happens for a reason. For the longest time I was so insecure and always felt like I wasn’t good enough. Every time I lost a job to somebody else, I thought: ‘That man deserves the job better than I did.’ Now I understand that everything needed to happen the way it did. Just don’t give up.
- My stepping away from acting was not an easy decision to make. I had to be realistic: There were not a lot of opportunities for an Asian actor at that time. I had no choice but to do something else, so I went to film school, graduated, and started working behind the camera.
- "Ke Huy Quan Is Back and Better Than Ever" in W Magazine (12 January 2023)
- But I think I’ve cried more in the last six months than I cried in the previous 20 years. Hearing all these wonderful comments from people about how much they’ve missed me on the screen and their warm embrace of my return has made me very emotional.
- "Ke Huy Quan Is Back and Better Than Ever" in W Magazine (12 January 2023)
- The irony, like I said, is that I didn't pursue acting when I was a little kid. But as I got older, in my late teens and early 20s, I really took it seriously. That’s what I wanted to do, what I wanted my profession to be. But when I started pursuing it, there were just not a lot of opportunities for me. It was extremely difficult for an Asian actor at that time. In Hollywood, very, very few child actors make smooth and successful transitions into adult acting. It's very difficult for many, but I think it's a hundred times—a thousand times—more difficult when you are an Asian actor. I found myself at a crossroads at a very early age. Do I want to continue down a path where I just didn't see many opportunities for myself? Or do I want to go down a path, an unknown path, where I really don't know what I want to do? And I struggled for a long, long time. And at the same time, I was just hoping that phone would ring with an amazing offer to be in a movie like Indiana Jones or The Goonies, or a great role for an Asian actor, and it never came. I was so dispirited and disheartened.
- "The Many Lives of Ke Huy Quan" in GQ Magazine (8 April 2022)
- I was raised to never forget where I came from and to always remember who gave me my first opportunity.
- As I grew older, I started to wonder if that was it, if that was just luck. For so many years, I was afraid I had nothing more to offer. No matter what I did, I would never surpass what I achieved as a kid.
- This time last year, all I was hoping for was just a job. And just when I think that it can’t get any better, it does. What an incredible honor.
- When I stepped away, that dream, all the dreams that I had of, you know, imagining one day of walking down the red carpet at the Oscars, those scenes dissipated and they were so distant that I didn't think they would ever come back. And so for me to be here today, to be nominated, it is so surreal. And it goes to show that, you know, if you stick with it, dreams do come true no matter how long it takes.
