Part of Famous After 40 featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Christoph Waltz, The Comeback with Robert Downey Jr. and Mickey Rourke, and The Goonies with Sean Astin and Josh Brolin.
Rise to Fame
At 13 he was Harrison Ford's sidekick in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. By his early twenties, the roles had dried up so completely he couldn't land a two-line Vietcong part. He spent the next two decades working as a stunt choreographer and assistant director, building a career around movies he wasn't in. Everything Everywhere All at Once brought him back in 2022 as Waymond Wang, and he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor the following year.
In the Spotlight
The Oscar solved the 'getting work' problem but not the 'getting the right work' problem. He followed the win with American Born Chinese and Loki, plus a voice role in Kung Fu Panda 4. Love Hurts, his first starring role in 40 years, opened in February 2025 and made $16 million against an $18 million budget. Reviews praised him and blamed the movie. A lead vehicle that actually connects has been harder to find than the Oscar was.
Side Notes
He was born in Saigon and fled Vietnam in 1978, part of the mass exodus of boat people who left after the war. His family split into two groups to reduce the risk of capture, spent a year in a refugee camp in Hong Kong, and landed in the United States in 1979. He earned a degree from USC's School of Cinematic Arts during his years away from the screen. At the Oscars he thanked his wife Echo by name, saying she'd told him, month after month for twenty years, that his time would come. She wasn't wrong.