Ke Huy Quan detailed what happened to him between his heyday and his comeback and how he’s remained friends with Steven Spielberg, who still sends him a Christmas present every year.
Ke Huy Quan, the former child star of Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, had disappeared from everybody’s radar after he bowed out of pursuing acting roles in the early 1990s after Hollywood had failed to materialize anything of note or quality for him. He recently came roaring back in a big way thanks to the audience and critical darling, Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Quan's time working with Spielberg forged a friendship that would last the year, with Spielberg and him remaining in touch, down to the beloved director sending Quan a yearly Christmas gift as a sign of fondness. Quan also told The Guardian about how when he got the role of Short Round, he wasn’t even there auditioning for himself. He was supporting his younger brother, but the casting director told him he should try out as well. Returning the next day for a meeting with Spielberg, his mom dressed Quan in a three-piece suit, and Spielberg asked him to return a third time due to how uncomfortable he looked. Suffice it to say, the meeting saw Quan on a plane for Sri Lanka three weeks later for the filming of Temple of Doom. But after that…nothing. The roles dried up until Spielberg intervened in Richard Donner's The Goonies.
The Temple of Doom role showed how heroic Quan could be. Whatever anyone else has to say about the film and its lack of political correctness, they can’t deny that Short Round is a true-blue hero who saves Indiana Jones from the “Black Sleep of Kali." Furthermore, the role of Data in The Goonies wasn’t dependent on Quan's race at all, a rare turn for the same decade that saw actors like Gedde Watanabe being forced to play racist caricatures like Long Duk Dong in the John Hughes movie Pretty In Pink. But then everything dried up again if one wasn’t willing to play a goofy stereotype, and Quan, a Vietnam refugee who was struggling to find himself and his identity in his new homeland, wasn’t.
After bowing out of mainstream work for several years (as a martial artist, he helped with things like the stunts in the X-Men movies), it was seeing Crazy Rich Asians, a film that centered on Asians, but inclusively, that made Quan get himself a new agent. From there it was a short time until Everything Everywhere All At Once landed in his lap and then everything seemed to blossom. He’s got at least two movies for Netflix, a reteaming with his EEAAO co-star Michelle Yeoh for American Born Chinese, and he is a part of the Loki season 2 cast, joining the MCU proper. For Quan, the answer was just about persevering and hanging in there until things swung around once again. Or as a member of The Goonies might quip, “Goonies never say die.”
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is available on Paramount Plus.
Source: The Guardian