Before Ke Huy Quan won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, this Cambodian actor made history acting in a movie about the genocide he personally survived
Ke Huy Quan #KeHuyQuan
At Sunday’s Academy Awards, Ke Huy Quan became the second Asian actor to win an Oscar for best supporting actor when he won for his role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” The first was Haing S. Ngor, who won in 1985 for his role in “The Killing Fields,” a movie about the Cambodian genocide he personally survived.
Haing S. Ngor was a Cambodian doctor who was imprisoned and tortured under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the 1970s, LAist reported. During Communist Cambodian Dictator Pol Pot’s reign, millions of Cambodians like Ngor were forced into deadly labor camps.
An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died in the camps between 1975 and 1979, including Ngor’s wife, who died in his arms, People magazine reported in 2019.
Ngor was able to escape the camps with his niece in 1979 by crawling across the border to Vietnam and living off of rats and termites along the way, according to People.
Ngor then emigrated in 1980 to Los Angeles, where he was discovered by “The Killing Fields” casting director, Pat Golden, at a Cambodian wedding, LAist reported. Although Ngor had no prior acting experience, Golden convinced him to audition for the role of Dith Pran, a real-life Cambodian journalist who survived and reported on the genocide.
“Luckily that videotape still exists, and it’s just beautiful,” Arthur Dong, a filmmaker who made a documentary about Ngor, told LAist about Ngor’s audition tape. “The performance was just wrenching… and the rawness of his ability to transfer that onto the screen.”
At the 1985 Academy Awards, Ngor won the award for best supporting actor, becoming the first-ever Asian actor to win in his category.
In his acceptance speech, Ngor said, “I thank Warner Brothers for helping me tell my story to the world — let the world know what happened in my country. And I thank God, Buddha, that tonight I am even here.”
Until his death, Ngor, who was fatally shot outside his home in 1996, used his Oscar win to continue spreading awareness about the atrocities he and millions of others experienced in Cambodia, according to People.
“‘The Killing Fields’ is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said before his death, according to People. “The war is over… But the battle is going on.”
Alongside Ke Huy Quan at Sunday night’s Oscars, Michelle Yeoh also made history for her role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” when she became the first Asian woman to win the award for best actress.
In his acceptance speech on Sunday, Quan spoke directly to his 84-year-old mother, who was watching from home, and reflected on how he got to the Oscars.
“My journey started on a boat,” he said. “I spent a year in a refugee camp. And somehow, I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage. They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I cannot believe it’s happening to me. This — this — is the American dream.”