Hollywood is destructive. A car that takes off at the same speed as it chases. An industry where you’re a star one day and an outcast the next. It’s always happened, and it’s especially cruel to child performers who become fashionable and have four consecutive hits before being swallowed up by fame or condemned to ostracism. There are several examples. There is Macaulay Culkin, who has gone from being America’s favorite son to being the object of commentary and criticism.
Six years before release Home aloneHollywood had another fashionable child. This time it was different because it was about a guy of Vietnamese descent who everyone in fiction called by his first name, Plug. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Introduced Ke Hui Quan, then known as Jonathan Hui Quan, to Anglo-Saxon culture and helped recruit him into any production. Steven Spielberg discovered a brash, charismatic and pure kid who a year later proved to be the kid of the moment. moods An iconic title created precisely by Steven Spielberg.
After these two successes, he disappeared from Hollywood. There were no more Asian child roles. The industry picked him up and spat him out. Since 1986, he has only appeared in completely cameo roles, and since 2002 he has not appeared in any direct films. But the Danes came and everything changed. It was a success Crazy rich Asians Which made him try again and go to the casting, for which, a priori, he was perfectly suited. This was the role for the new Daniel Madness. called Everything everywhere at the same timeAnd then it was just a surreal comedy about the multiverses of two future directors.
Hui Quan took advantage of this new opportunity without thinking that he was facing a Hollywood phenomenon and a role that would give him his first Oscar. He’s been a favorite for months and has barely missed an award along the way, and that was proven by the Oscar he received from last year’s winners, Troy Kotsuri and Ariana DeBose, who was excited just by his name. The actor received a standing ovation. The entire audience stood up and cried, remembering his mother: “Mom, I won an Oscar.” “My life began on a ship, I was in a concentration camp. Stories like mine only happen in movies, I never thought it would happen to me. This is the American dream,” he added.
The actress spent more than three decades thinking she didn’t belong, and she admitted it in an emotional speech at the Golden Globes, a moment that quickly went viral. “I grew up to never forget where I came from and always remember who gave me my first chance.” I’m so glad to see Steven Spielberg here tonight. Steve, thank you! When I started my career as a child actor, I felt very lucky to be cast. As I got older, I began to wonder if it was just luck. For years I feared I had nothing more to offer. No matter what I did, I could never surpass what I achieved as a child,” she said through tears.
“Fortunately, after more than 30 years, two guys were thinking of me. They remembered that kid and gave me a chance to try again. Everything that happened after that was incredible. Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, thank you very much. You’ve given me more than I expected,” he concluded in a speech that also helped in the Oscar race, where it’s not just about giving a great performance, but creating the best story for the award.
Ke Hui Kuan’s story is one that Hollywood loves. A story of redemption that washes their hands of guilt. They were the ones who pulled him aside, stopped calling him and giving him papers. The same ones who, after more than 30 years, recognize everything with an Oscar for their exhibition. It’s also a prize for an actor who makes them comfortable with one of the most recent parts of US history, the Vietnam War. Hui Quan was born in Saigon, and after the fall of the city in the war with the US, his parents tried twice to flee the country without success.
If they had more opportunities, their parents separated their children and ran away separately. Her mother took her three siblings to Malaysia, and her father took five, including her, to a refugee camp in Hong Kong, where they spent a year before being granted political asylum in the United States. In 1979, he was able to reunite with his brothers and mother. A “larger than life” story, typical of a Hollywood film that also recognizes with this award a whole generation of actors of Asian descent, condemned to funny supporting roles, but never the gap they deserved in the industry.
Source: El Diario
