HOLLYWOOD (CNS) – Oscar-winning actor Ke Huy Quan placed his handprints and footprints in cement in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre Monday, four days before the release of “Love Hurts,” his first major leading man role.
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who directed Quan in his Oscar- winning performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” were among those joining him at the ceremony.
Quan, who went about 20 years without acting after achieving success in film as a child, got emotional as he reflected on his Hollywood comeback.
He said that over the years he would be “reminded how that once hopeful actor turned into just another moviegoer,” he said during the ceremony. “And now here we are, more than 40 years later, and not only am I acting again, but that crazy dream actually came true.”
In “Love Hurts,” Quan portrays Marvin Gable, a real estate agent working in the Milwaukee suburbs who receives a crimson envelope from Rose (Ariana DeBose) described in publicity materials for the action comedy as “a former partner-in-crime that he had left for dead.”
Quan said when he read the script for “Love Hurts” for the first time, “I was very confused why they would offer me the role of Marvin Gable because I thought it was written for somebody else. In fact, I said `You should be calling Jason Statham.’
“I understand what they were trying to achieve was to create a different kind of action star, someone that is not afraid to be vulnerable or wear his emotions on the sleeves,” Quan said in a promotional video for the film.
Before his Oscar-winning role in the 2022 absurdist comedy-drama “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Quan was best known for portraying Short Round, the 12-year-old orphan sidekick of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) in the 1984 action-adventure film, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
Quan was also part of the cast of the 1985 American adventure comedy “The Goonies.” Sean Astin, one of his castmates in “The Goonies,” is also among his castmates in “Love Hurts.”
Quan quit acting following the 2002 Hong Kong film “Second Time Around.” He was the assistant fight choreographer and translator for the 2000 superhero film “X-Men,” the assistant action choreography director for the 2001 science fiction action film “The One,” whose cast included Statham, and assistant director for the 2004 romantic science fiction drama”2046.”
Quan was inspired to return to acting following the success of the 2018 romantic comedy-drama “Crazy Rich Asians.” He returned to acting in the 2021 Netflix family adventure film “Finding Ohana.”
Quan was born Aug. 20, 1971, in what was then Saigon, South Vietnam, now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Quan, his father and five siblings fled Vietnam in 1978, three years after the communist takeover of South Vietnam, for Hong Kong. After staying at a refugee camp in Hong Kong, Quan’s entire family was admitted to the United States as part of the Refugee Admissions Program in 1979.
Quan was cast in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” after his younger brother initially auditioned.
Kwan and Scheiner struggled to cast an actor to portray Waymond Wang, the meek and goofy husband of laundromat owner Evelyn Quan Wang (Michelle Yeoh), and alternate versions of the character in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Kwan stumbled upon Quan on the social network then known as Twitter, auditioned for the role and was cast.
When he won his Oscar, Quan noted his journey from his native Vietnam in his acceptance speech saying, “My journey started on a boat after a year in a refugee camp and somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage. They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I cannot believe it’s happening to me. This is the American dream!”
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