Everything Everywhere All At Once is the movie everyone’s eyes are on this Oscar season. The Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert directed film has garnered 11 Academy Award nominations and is the favorite to win this year. One of the nominations has gone to Ke Huy Quan for the supporting actor category. The actor’s start, disappearance, and then return to his acting career is fascinating to know about and his co-star shares the same sentiment. Stephanie Hsu recently gave her views on why Quan returned to the silver screen after more than 2 decades of anonymity.
Stephanie Hsu Explains Why Ke Huy Quan Returned To The Big Screen
In an interview with Variety, Stephanie Hsu, star of Everything Everywhere All At Once, detailed why her co-star Ke Huy Quan came back to Hollywood after having almost left acting in the 90s. She said that it was his love for the art that pulled him back. As per the actress:
“Ke (Huy Quan) came back because his love for this was so big that he could not hold it anymore.”
The 32-year-old actress of the Academy-nominated film further said that careers need to have stops and starts so that they don’t become an unending rat race. The star said:
“I think sometimes our industry makes it feel like once you go, you can’t stop and it’s some sort of a momentum climb. I think it’s important to remember that life if you’re lucky, is long. Artistic careers need ebbs and flow to evolve into the next chapter of yourself. It’s not meant to be a rat race.”
Hsu’s comments are apt because her co-star is the best example of an actor who reached peak stardom and then faded from the limelight, only to make a triumphant return with a film that is on everyone’s lips right now. It’s a comeback story all actors dream of but only a few can achieve.
Ke Huy Quan Returned To Acting After Seeing This Movie
Quan got a dream start to his Hollywood career after getting cast in Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom as Ford’s sidekick named Short Round at just 12 years of age. To make matters even better, he got to play Data Wang in Spielberg’s next, The Goonies, alongside actors like Sean Austin and Josh Brolin. But after that things got strange. He didn’t get any more substantial roles. In an interview with People in April 2022, he said that he thought that he was going to have an amazing career, but that didn’t happen. He said:
“It was tough. I was waiting for the phone to ring, and it rarely did.”
The actor had hung up his acting gear and had taken up work behind the camera. But one movie made him want to return to the front of the camera and join his fellow Asian actors. That film was in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. He said in the same interview:
“I had serious FOMO. I wanted to be up there with my fellow Asian actors!”
The 51-year-old actor got that chance to return with the mind and genre-bending film, Everything Everywhere All At Once. Quan says that the script for the film made it feel like it was written just for him. As per the star:
“When I read the script, I thought it was written for me because they are me. I understood every single one of them. I don’t think I could have played Waymond had you given me the role 10 or 15 years ago, but, Looking back upon my life, all the highs and lows, I reached deep within me to pour my entire life into these three different characters.”
Whether Quan takes home the Oscar for the supporting actor category remains to be seen, but it can’t be denied that Hollywood has got a great actor back in their midst again.
Source: Variety
