Ke Huy Quan: from The Goonies to the 2023 Oscars and Marvel!

2023 has been an amazing year for Ke Huy Quan as an actor. The Oscar-winning actor appeared in the Disney Plus series 'Loki' and is now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Image: Disney+

Ke Huy Quan, also known as Jonathan Ke Quan, became an 80s' icon with two big movies: 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' and 'The Goonies'.

In 2023, Quan was back in the spotlights. A mature and successful actor, he picked up the Golden Globe and the Oscar for his role in 'Everything Everywhere All At Once.'

Image: Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh in 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' (2022)

As he received his Golden Globe, he addressed director Steven Spielberg (who was in the audience as a nominee for another movie, 'The Fabelmans') directly. Quan thanked Spielberg for giving him his first opportunities.

How did the boy make it in Hollywood? And what happened after his jump to fame?

Ke Huy Quan was born in 1971 in Saigon (the actual Ho Chi Minh). The conflict between the United States and North Vietnamese forces was still going on.

When Saigon fell to the communists, his parents, his eight siblings, and Quan were forced to emigrate to the United States as refugees. The family arrived in America after spending a year in a refugee camp in Hong Kong.

Luckily, moving into a new country - the family settled in Los Angeles - allowed his family to prosper and Ke Huy Quan became an actor at just 12 years old.

It was at the beginning of 1984 when, as a young boy, he was chosen by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas to play the role of Indiana Jones' sidekick in the second movie of the blockbuster saga.

According to what the actor told People magazine, he didn't audition for the role. Quan was just accompanying his brother to the casting and giving him instructions on how to do the audition when the casting director saw him and asked him to audition himself.

In a lengthy interview with GQ, he explained: "The next day we got a call from Steven's office. I went there, walked into the room, and there was George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Steven Spielberg, and we spent an entire afternoon together. Three weeks later, I was on a flight to Sri Lanka on one of the most amazing adventures of my life."

For his first role, the actor was granted the Hollywood Young Artist Award. He received it under the name of Ke Quan, which his parents had chosen for him. Americans also knew him as Jonathan, however.

Talking about his beginnings, Ke Quan says: "Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would end up being an actor. But I fell in love with it. That movie changed my life and my entire family's life."

His second movie was another hit and has passed on through generations as a cult film in its genre. 'The Goonies' (1985) featured the child actor in the role of Data, a smart, witty boy who was able to create the strangest of gadgets.

Although it was a very normal thing in the 80s, nowadays a stereotypical Asian character with the name of Data would raise some eyebrows.

Data would be his last big role. In 1986, he participated in the Japanese movie 'Passengers' ('Norimono'), sharing the screen with the famous Japanese singer Honda Minako.

Although the actor speaks English, Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Cantonese, he's not familiar with the Japanese language.

In 1986, Quan also started acting in TV productions. He played Sam, the adopted son of Elliot Gould and Dee Wallace in the show 'Together We Stand.' The series was not very successful and got canceled after a year.

We could also see him in 1990 and 1991 playing the role of Jasper Kwong in the ABC sitcom 'Head of the Class'.

Little by little, his acting career started to slow down. We saw him as Charlie Moore in 'Breathing Fire' (1991), doing a cameo in 'Encino Man' (1992), and participating in the Hong Kong film 'Second Time Around' in 2002.

From that moment on, Quan disappeared from the public eye. He decided to use the taekwondo skills he had learned from Master Philip Tan (while filming 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom') and Tao-Liang Tan to work as a fight scene choreographer.

He was so good at his new job, that the former actor choreographed scenes for 'X-Men' (2000), 'The One' (2001), and the multi-awarded short film 'Enigma' (2010).

His disappearance from the spotlights had a lot to do with the pressure of Hollywood stereotypes and discrimination against Asian actors. He later revealed that "it was tough. I was waiting for the phone to ring, and it rarely did."

Despite his successes as a scene choreographer, Quan wanted more. "I was very lucky to work for filmmakers like Corey Yuen and Wong Kar-Wai. And I was content at that time, but something was missing, and I didn't know what it was," he said in GQ. "And I guess it was because for many years I lied to myself by saying that I didn't like acting anymore to make it feel less painful."

More than 10 years after his last appearance, Quan returned to the big screen. He dropped the English name Jonathan and played in the movie 'Finding Ohana,' directed by Jude Wang in 2021. Ke Huy Quan was back.

The biggest step in his new career as an actor was his casting in the film 'Everything Everywhere All at Once.' Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the acclaimed movie also stars actresses Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis.

In this sci-fi comedy, Ke Quan plays the role of Waymond Wang, the husband of Michelle Yeoh's character. During the film, Waymond tries to help his wife through multiple universes, having a new identity in each one of them. It meant that the actor had to play three characters in one.

The actor says that the character was perfect for him: "When I read the script, I thought it was written for me because they are me. I understood every single one of them."

The actor wanted to switch the narrative around: "For many, many years people recognized me only as a child because that was pretty much the last time they saw me up on the screen."With his new role, he hoped that people would recognize him and say: "Oh my God! You're Waymond from 'Everything Everywhere All at Once', and you were also in Indiana Jones and 'The Goonies'!"

Quan says it was the right time for his role in 'Everything Everywhere.' "I don't think I could have played Waymond had you given me the role 10, 15 years ago. Looking back upon my life, all the highs and lows, I reached deep within me to pour my entire life into these three different characters."

The actor has shared with various media that it was an old 'Goonies' friend who helped him get this new role. Jeff Cohen, mostly known for his role as Chunk in 'The Goonies', abandoned acting to become a lawyer. Yet, he helped Quan with the contract of 'Everything Everywhere All at Once.'

It's heart-warming to know that the little boys of 'The Goonies' are still friends. As Ke Quan shared: "Goonies never say die. We're always going to be Goonies." He continued to explain to GQ: "Yes, I’m good friends with Jeff. He's my entertainment lawyer and we see each other a lot. I see Corey Feldman and Sean Astin a lot, too."

We could say that the actor's career has been reborn. He wanted to represent that fact by going back to his Vietnamese birth name: Ke Huy Quan. This way, Quan makes sure to show that he is proud of his Vietnamese roots.