Even if Ke Huy Quan fails to win a Bafta, his joyful Instagram account and own personal Hollywood happy ending have already secured him the unofficial accolade of “2023 awards season breakout star”.
Quan – up for a British Academy award for his role as affable laundromat owner Waymond Wang in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once – arrived in America as a refugee from Vietnam in 1979. Aged 10, he tagged along with his brother to an open audition for a film and ended up winning the role that turned him into one of the most recognisable child stars of the 1980s. He played Chinese orphan Short Round in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – Harrison Ford taught him to swim during the shoot in Sri Lanka. A year later, he starred as Data in The Goonies, the seventh highest-grossing US film of 1985.
