A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: There's a moment in Ke Huy Quan's new movie Love Hurts where his character, this assassin-turned-real estate agent named Marvin, tells his assistant to find something she loves and then go after it.
I couldn't help but see real parts of Ke's life reflected in this idea. Here's this guy who came to America as a refugee from the Vietnam War. He lucked into an audition in Los Angeles as a 13-year-old and got super famous as Harrison Ford's young sidekick in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Right after that he played Data in The Goonies, the kid with all the gadgets. These were huge movies with a massive cultural footprint even today.
But he stopped getting roles after that. No one would have blamed him if he had just quit Hollywood altogether. But Ke had found the thing that he loved, and he didn't let the fact that one path closed stop him from getting the life he wanted — including an Oscar for his role in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What's something your parents taught you to love?
Ke Huy Quan: Myself. They were great parents. My mom always says, "Believe in yourself. You are your worst enemy if you don't believe in yourself." That's what was taught growing up. They really made us believe that the impossible was possible — especially given our background. How we started, how we came here. And it's pretty remarkable. I look at my entire family: all my siblings are very successful in business and they all started with nothing. We all came here with nothing.
In fact, my parents were heavily in debt when we came here. And what my first movie did for me when it came out — the money that I made I was able to help pay back some of the debts my parents owed. Because getting on that boat cost us a lot of money. We paid in gold sheets. That's how we got on the boat in Vietnam and then escaped to Hong Kong, and spent a year in the refugee camp there. Luckily the American government at that time was very generous. They accepted us.
Rachel Martin: Your parents were just incredible. It takes such fortitude and strength and courage on the part of your parents — they had to have believed it, that if you love yourself, you can achieve anything. Because that was true for them. They saw this as their goal and they made it happen.
Quan: Yeah, and we were very lucky. Had they not believed in that themselves, there was no way that all of us would be able to come here. All of us are alive and well. We know a lot of families that were not so lucky making that journey. A lot of people died. So to see how we got here — that entire journey — and also how much my entire family has accomplished, it's pretty remarkable.
Question 2: What is something you still feel you need to prove to the people you meet?
Quan: I always feel like I'm not good enough. You know, I spent so many years auditioning for stuff. Waiting in the audition room. Trying to prove to filmmakers that I'm perfect for this role. And the majority of the time — and this is a story of many actors, not just me — I wouldn't get them. And then, of course, when I go watch the movie when it comes out, and I see the role that I auditioned for, I would say, "Oh, yeah, I understand why I didn't get that role, because that actor is great in it. He's so much better than me."
So even to this day, I still feel like I'm never good enough. But the internal narrative is slowly changing.
Martin: Yeah, I would hope that little gold statue in your house somewhere does some work in remedying that false narrative.
Quan: You know, it's interesting — right after I won the Oscar, the next day I woke up literally thinking, "Was that all a dream?" And I was staring at my wife and I asked her, "Wait, was yesterday a dream?" And she said, "No, you won an Oscar."
Question 3: Do you think there's order in the universe, or is it all chaos?
Quan: I have to believe in order. There is order in the universe. You know, I'm a Buddhist. And Buddhism is all about maintaining balance: you have good, you have bad. You have up and you have down. Everything is balanced out. I do believe there's order. There's got to be. I have to believe in that.
Martin: Have you seen that play out in your life? Are you able to examine it, look back and say, "There is a pattern to these things. There is order?"
Quan: I don't know if there's a pattern but I do believe that everything happens for a reason.
Martin: You do?
Quan: Yeah, especially looking at my own life story: where it started, the entire journey. I learned so much along the way. And somehow I ended up where I really wanted to be.
But then if you told me four years ago, I would not believe it. But when the opportunity of Everything Everywhere All at Once came to me, I don't think I could have played that role — played the multiple versions of that role in that movie — had I not had that journey.
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