Ke Huy Quan wins the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” during the Oscars show at the 95th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles on March 12, 2023. Photo by Reuters/Carlos Barria
Time magazine has named Vietnamese-born American actor Ke Huy Quan in its annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
British actor Tom Hiddleston wrote in the US publication about Quan: “His positivity, his fight to keep the dream alive, is the most profound kind of spiritual strength. These qualities are his unique gifts. At last, the world has recognized them.”
Quan was born in 1971 in Saigon. In 1979 his family moved to the US, where he began acting at the age of 12.
He made a name for himself in Hollywood as a child actor playing iconic roles like Indiana Jones’s kid sidekick Short Round in the 1984 blockbuster “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
A year later Quan once again found mainstream popularity as Data, the young, inventive one among his neighborhood crew in the ’80s classic “The Goonies.”
But after that he failed for decades to get any roles on a regular basis.
After 40 years his career was revived when he starred in A24’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” In it he plays the doting husband and laundromat owner Waymond Wang alongside the main character Evelyn portrayed by Michelle Yeoh.
His performance as Waymond was critically acclaimed and it brought him many accolades, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar for best supporting actor.
Quan’s next project will be season 2 of Marvel’s series Loki, where he will star alongside Hiddleston.
“At this year’s gathering of TIME 100, the overarching theme was the confluence of interconnected challenges, from climate and public health to democracy and equality,” Time said referring to how it thing the 2023 list.
Other notable names on the list this year are actor Micheal B. Jordan, musician Doja Cat, writer Salman Rushdie, and footballer Kylian Mbappe.
