When Harrison Ford announced Everything Everywhere All At Once as this year’s Oscars Best Picture winner, its star Ke Huy Quan rushed to the stage and immediately leapt into the actor’s arms. Almost four decades ago, the pair had starred together in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, when Quan was just a child. Ford’s career went from strength to strength. But the roles for Quan soon began to dry up, and he was forced to settle into a career of stunt coordination and assistant directing. Everything Everywhere All At Once wasn’t merely a comeback. It was a second chance at a dream.
So to see Quan, a newly crowned Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor, offered the chance to celebrate with the same man who helped guide him through his very first steps into the industry – well, to quote the actor himself, “they say stories like this only happen in the movies”. The Oscars always like to talk the talk. Every year, we get the same twinkly-eyed speeches about how Hollywood is really a dream factory where we’re limited only by our own imaginations. Rarely does it ever feel like those words have any meaning. This year might be the rare exception.
