Ke Huy Quan

Ke Huy Quan has played two parts that Hollywood forgot about and then remembered. The first was a twelve-year-old sidekick in 1984. The second was a worn-out husband in a multiverse comedy, which earned him an Academy Award at an age when he had been out of acting for decades [1] [3]. He won Best Supporting Actor on 12 March 2023 for Everything Everywhere All at Once, beating four nominees, among them Brendan Gleeson and Judd Hirsch [1].

Born in Vietnam, he is an American actor. Whether he was born in 1970 or 1971 is not settled, and no source we could open gives a confirmed birth date. That is why this page does not state his age.

Early life and the escape from Vietnam

Quan was born in Vietnam [3]. Wikidata lists 20 August 1971 as his date of birth [10], and Biography.com described him as 51 in March 2023 [6], which fits a birth in 1971 or early 1972. We treat the exact date as unconfirmed.

He was seven when his family left. They fled in the middle of the night and split up on purpose, to improve their chances of getting out [3]. His father and five of his siblings escaped by boat and reached Hong Kong [4]. Quan spent about a year in a refugee camp there with his father and five siblings. His mother was separated from them [3]. According to Yahoo News, she and other siblings went to Malaysia in the meantime [5].

The family was granted political asylum and reunited in the United States, where they arrived in 1979 [5] [3]. Settling in was hard. Quan has said people called them "fresh off the boat" and mocked them at school, which he described as damaging to a child's state of mind [5] [3].

He does not describe a family that talked about feelings. "I grew up in a family where we just don't share our emotions with each other," he told Variety, as quoted by NBC News. It is the reason, he said, that he used his Oscar speech to thank his parents in public [4]. At the ceremony he also said that his mother, who was 84, was watching from home [11] [5].

Short Round and Data: the child years

Quan did not set out to be an actor. He went to an open casting call with his brother, and the casting director asked him to audition as well. Steven Spielberg picked him to play Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) [3] [5]. Three weeks after the audition he left for Sri Lanka to shoot the film [5]. He was about twelve [5].

A year later he played Richard "Data" Wang in The Goonies (1985) [11] [5]. He also worked in television, in the sitcoms Together We Stand and Head of the Class [5]. Biography.com mentions Head of the Class and a small part in Encino Man (1992), and says job opportunities were no longer forthcoming after that [6].

The break from acting

The break was not a retirement announcement. It was a long wait. Quan has said that in his early 20s he "waited for the phone to ring", and that Asian child actors faced an especially hard move into adult roles [5]. At the Hollywood Reporter actors roundtable he put it more bluntly: "Hollywood didn't want me" [11].

So he moved behind the camera. He studied film at USC and worked as a stunt choreographer and assistant director [3]. Biography.com lists fight-choreography work on Hong Kong action films and on the Hollywood productions X-Men (2000) and The One (2001) [6]. In 2004 he was assistant director to Wong Kar-wai on 2046 [6]. That set is also where he met his wife (see Relationships below) [7].

The gap lasted, by Biography.com's count, more than two decades [6]. Carnegie Corporation calls Everything Everywhere All at Once his first film role in over 30 years [3]. The two counts differ, so treat both as approximate.

The comeback

The turn came with a film he was not in. In 2018 Crazy Rich Asians renewed his wish to act, and Biography.com reports that he saw it three times in the cinema [6]. He has said Hollywood had changed dramatically and was offering more opportunities to a wider range of people [11]. He was 50 when he decided to go back [5] [3].

An agent friend agreed to represent him. About two weeks later, he was contacted about Everything Everywhere All at Once [5]. He played Waymond Wang, the husband of Michelle Yeoh's character [3] [12]. The film was released in 2022 [1].

Awards sweep, 2023

Quan won the main supporting actor awards of the 2023 season.

Award	Year	Result
Golden Globe, Best Supporting Actor, Motion Picture	2023	Won [2]
Screen Actors Guild Award, Male Actor in a Supporting Role	2023	Won [12]
Critics' Choice Movie Award and Gotham Award, supporting actor	2023	Won [11]
Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor	2023	Won [1]
Carnegie Corporation Great Immigrants honoree	2023	Honoured [3]

The SAG ceremony was the 29th, held on 26 February 2023 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The film's cast also won the ensemble prize [12]. NBC News reported that Quan was the first Asian actor to win that category [11].

The Oscar came on 12 March at the 95th Academy Awards, held at the Dolby Theatre [1]. His co-nominees were Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin), Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway) and Judd Hirsch (The Fabelmans) [1]. He was the second actor of Asian descent to win the category, after Haing Ngor won for The Killing Fields [11]. The film took seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh [5]. Harrison Ford, his co-star from the Indiana Jones film nearly forty years earlier, presented the award [5].

In his speech he said: "This is the American dream" [11]. He later told Variety he wanted the world to know how much his parents meant to him [4].

Best-known work

Year	Title	Role
1984	Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom	Short Round [3]
1985	The Goonies	Richard "Data" Wang [11]
1992	Encino Man	Small part [6]
2022	Everything Everywhere All at Once	Waymond Wang [12]
2023	Loki, season 2	Ouroboros "O.B." [13]
2025	With Love (action film, US release 7 February 2025)	Lead [8] [14]

Not every credit is in the table. Quan also worked on television, as noted above, and Biography.com noted that he was set to appear in the Disney+ series American Born Chinese [6].

Marvel and Loki

Quan appeared at D23 in September 2022 alongside Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino to announce that he had joined season 2 of Marvel's Loki as a Time Variance Authority employee [9]. At the same event he met Harrison Ford again, who was promoting the fifth Indiana Jones film [9]. His character was Ouroboros, known as O.B. [13].

In February 2025 he told GamesRadar+ that he would be open to playing O.B. again and would like to see the character leave the TVA and meet people "in the main timeline", naming Spider-Man and Iron Man as examples. He added that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige makes the final call [13].

Relationships

Quan is married to Echo Quan. They met in 2004 on the production of 2046, where he was an assistant director. Wong Kar-wai introduced them, and they started dating [7]. People reported that they married more than two decades ago and live in Los Angeles. No wedding date is given and we do not state one [7].

Echo worked on Everything Everywhere All at Once as the on-set translator. The directors, known as the Daniels, called her "the secret soul to our film set" in a post, and said it was her first industry job since moving to Los Angeles [7]. Quan thanked her publicly at the Golden Globes ("My wife Echo. I love you with all my heart") and credited her at the Oscars with believing in his comeback for over 20 years [7]. In a Variety interview he admitted he had sometimes been frustrated with her [7].

The People profile does not mention any children, and we found no on-record statement from Quan about them. We therefore make no claim either way.

What he does now

His first leading film role since the Oscar was the action film With Love, from Universal and 87North, with David Leitch and Kelly McCormick producing and Jonathan Eusebio directing his first theatrical feature. TheWrap reported it in January 2024 [8]. Yahoo, citing Variety, gave a US release date of 7 February 2025 [14].

The latest project we could verify is Fairytale in New York, a Lionsgate action film directed by Jalmari Helander. Quan stars as an unassuming cab driver, with principal photography planned for March to May 2027 in New York and New Jersey, according to a report dated 5 November 2026 [15]. We could not verify his role, if any, in other announced franchise films, so we leave them out.

Net worth

No reliable outlet has published a net worth estimate for Quan that we could open and cite, so we give none. Sites that quote a figure usually do not name a method or source.

Why his story gets told

The pull of the story is partly the long gap and partly the way he explains it. He left Vietnam at seven, worked on a Spielberg set at twelve, and spent years waiting for roles before taking up stunt work and directing. At about 50 he was taken on by an agent friend, and within weeks was contacted about in the film that changed his career [5] [3]. Carnegie Corporation named him a 2023 Great Immigrants honoree [3]. His own summary, at the Oscars, was brief: "Dreams are something you have to believe in" [11].