Chau sees big upside to playing refugee in ‘Downsizing’

LOS ANGELES — Even as a one-legged Vietnamese human rights activist who’s been shrunk to just 5 inches, Hong Chau stands tall in “Downsizing.”

A Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominee as best supporting actress and an Oscar front-runner in the same category, Chau, 38, creates a strong character in Ngoc Lan Tran, who escaped from prison, lost her leg and was downsized against her will.

In exile in Leisureland, the miniature New Mexico community, Tran is a housekeeper who bonds with Matt Damon’s Paul Safranek.

“When I read this, I was blown away by the insightful observations about race and class,” Chau said.

“It humanizes immigrants and refugees in a way I’ve never seen before. My character is really a revelation to me. It’s somebody who we think we all know but not in this way.”

Unlike many representations of Asians as quiet or meek, Tran, who speaks with an accent, is bossy and demanding, often to hilarious effect.

Yet there has been controversy. “When I look at my parents I don’t see a stereotype, I see a human being, a full person” Chau said, adding, “I’m not quite sure why people are so flabbergasted to hear a person with an accent in a movie.

“We’re surrounded by people who speak with accents; we’re a nation of immigrants.

“In any major city we have people who work in kitchens and do the labor no one else wants to do. The movie shows the machinery, the apparatus, the value system that allows for that inequality.”

Chau admires how the film is serious and funny. “Most of the time when people think of a refugee story they immediately think it’s going to be sad or depressing.

“When we tell these stories about difficult issues that people feel uncomfortable with” — overpopulation, climate change, racism — “we need to just humanize it.

“People of color, we have a sense of humor. We laugh,” she said with a laugh.

“When I read this I didn’t see her as a stereotype. I think it’s OK to laugh if someone you love says or does something peculiar. My parents make me laugh — and also cry — more than anyone.

“I love my character and I feel the writers love her. Hopefully the audience will, too. If the audience is laughing, it’s out of deep affection.”

SHRINKING DISTANCES: Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau) and Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) are people from different backgrounds who bond after meeting in the miniaturized community of Leisureland.

NO SMALL ROLES: Hong Chau, above and right with Christoph Waltz, plays a woman who is shrunk against her will in ‘Downsizing.’