When dreams come true
Ke Huy Quan’s story shows us that age and time are never impediments to dreams, and that with hard work, perseverance, and a lot of patience, dreams can come true.
orty-five years ago, in the treacherous waters between Vietnam and Hong Kong was a boat filled with 3,000 refugees who fled Saigon. Among those passengers floating on the restless sea was a little boy of seven, who, together with his four siblings and his father, stared out into the waters and an unknown future.
Forty-five years later, the little boy on the boat takes center stage at the 80th Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton. The young boy, now 51 years old, is Vietnamborn actor Ke Huy Quan.
Quan who won Best Supporting Actor (Comedy or Musical) for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Quan was born in Saigon in 1971 into a large family made up of eight siblings. His mother and father split up their brood when they fled Vietnam. Quan, his father, and a few of his other siblings were headed to a work camp in Hong Kong.
In a Vanity Fair interview, he recalled, “I was so young. I didn’t understand why we gave up the place we called home to get on a boat in the middle of the night with 3,000 people.” The refugees were held on the boat for more than a month before being allowed onshore. In 1979, Quan and his family finally reunited at Los Angeles International Airport and moved to Chinatown. He has been an LA resident ever since.
He first got his big break as Short Round, the young boy who was Harrison Ford’s sidekick in Indiana Jones. In his acceptance speech at the Golden Globe, he credited director Stephen Spielberg for giving him his very first break. After doing a couple of more films and some stints on television, the roles dried up. Quan went back to school, and upon graduation in 1999, armed with a degree in Cinematic Arts from USC, he then became a fight scene choreographer in the decades that followed.
When Crazy Rich Asians became a huge hit, his interest in acting was reborn. His wife Echo, whom he met while working with director Wong Kar Wai, encouraged his dream. The EEAO producers had been struggling to cast an Asian actor for the role of Waymond Wong and by chance found Quan on Twitter. He auditioned for the role, and the rest is history. The movie, released in early 2022, was a huge box office success and was Quan’s first foray into acting after more than 30 years.
Between making the film and its unprecedented box office success early last year, life became challenging once more for Quan. He talked about that period in the wilderness with Vanity Fair as he waited for the movie to come out: “I couldn’t get a single job. In fact, I lost my health insurance. It was a time where I was at my lowest.
And then our movie came out, and it changed everything.”
There is much to be learned from Ke Huy Quan’s story. First, it’s that when we have a dream, it’s important to hold on to it. There may be seasons in our lives when we need to park those dreams due to circumstances which is what Quan did when he shifted careers for two decades.
Next is that we must keep showing up and not be afraid of rejection as we work our way towards our dream. The actress Angela Bassett, who won a second Best Supporting Actress Globe after 30 years for her role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, quoted author Toni Morrison, whose words resonate with the long and winding path Quan himself has taken. Morrison wrote, “Your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.”
Who would ever have thought that a seven-year-old boy fleeing his home country on a boat crossing treacherous waters would win a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor award 45 years later? Quan said he had been dreaming of winning a Globe for the last 38 years. I’m so happy for the success that has come to Ke Huy Quan. His story shows us that age and time are never impediments to dreams, and that with hard work, perseverance, and a lot of patience, dreams can come true.