Ke Huy Quan talks about his journey from refugee to Oscar winner

For the rest of his life and career ahead, he’ll always be introduced as Oscar winner, Ke Huy Quan. When Ke accepted the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, Ke took the moment to thank his mother and shine a light on his refugee and immigrant background. "My mom is 84-years-old and she’s at home watching. Mom, I just won an Oscar! My journey started on a boat, I spent a year in a refugee camp, and somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage,” Ke said tearfully.

Now, in the cover story for Variety magazine, Ke elaborates.

“I was just a normal kid in Vietnam in 1978, and all of a sudden my parents decided to flee the country. I didn’t understand what was happening. All I knew was I was separated from my mom, from my little brother and a couple of my sisters. It was in the middle of the night when my dad, five of my siblings and I escaped in a boat. We got to Hong Kong, and I was in a refugee camp surrounded by guards and police officers for an entire year until we were granted political asylum. Then I got on a plane and landed for the first time in Los Angeles. This was in 1979.

I didn’t have the maturity to process the sacrifices that my parents made so that we could have a better future. And as fate would have it, four years later, I landed a job on “Indiana Jones,” which changed my life. I always wanted to thank my parents for what they did, but I grew up in a family where we just don’t share that kind of emotion with each other. And then last night I did that publicly. I wanted the world to know how much my parents meant to me. Also, our movie, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” is about this immigrant family. That’s why the story resonated with me so much.”

Ke also talks about his hiatus from acting. The truth is that there were very few opportunities for Asian actors but Ke blamed himself for being unable to find a job.

“I was taught never to blame anybody. If something doesn’t go the way you want, it’s either because you didn’t work hard enough, you weren’t good enough or you didn’t try hard enough. So when I couldn’t get a job, I blamed myself: I thought I wasn’t tall enough, I wasn’t good-looking enough, or I wasn’t a good enough actor because I wasn’t classically trained. I never blamed anybody — even to this day.”

Haunted by that 20-year gap in his acting career, Ke knows that no opportunity is promised. “I’m so worried that this is only a one-time thing,” Ke told his agent, afraid that more opportunities won’t come his way.

Thankfully, Ke has his wife Echo to keep him optimistic. “Trust me, your time will come,” she told him every month of the 20 years before he landed the role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”

“At times, I was frustrated with her,” Quan said. “I told her, ‘You keep saying that, and it’s never going to happen.’ I didn’t believe it. Twenty years isn’t a short time.”

Echo was right, and I have a feeling we’ll be seeing much more of Oscar winner, Ke Huy Quan.

Click here to read the full story from Variety.