Ke Huy Quan

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hi there.

This is, I'm going to say it, this is the craziest life story we've heard from anyone on the show. It's an impossible life story.

I told a lot of people afterwards, after we recorded this episode, that it was a very special one.

Me too. It's the biggest delta that's ever been covered in a lifespan in two years.

Just such a beautiful performance.

Yes. Oh, and when you hear his life story, you just want to go back and rewatch.

I feel like we were almost crying the whole time.

Yep, that's fair. Also, you can see Kee currently in season two of Loki on Disney+. So please enjoy Kee Hui Kwan.

He's an armchair experimenter.

You came to visit us when we were shooting everything, everywhere, all at once.

Thousand percent. I intend to tell that story. You still live in Woodland Hills? Yeah. How long was that drive for you?

An hour. It was an hour? Friday's the worst. I miss the time where... I used to live in Covina.

Yes. Well, I know West Covina.

Yeah. It's just the next exit down. I used to go from Covina to Beverly Hills. Ooh. But back in the 90s, it used to take me only 45 minutes.

Yeah. Covina to Beverly Hills. Now, that's a 90-minute drive, for sure. Twice as long. I want to start with a very simple question, which is every time I hear someone introduce you, they go full.

Everybody calls me Kee. And sometimes they'll say Kee Kwan. Sometimes they'll say Kee, Hui Kwan. But as long as you say my name, I'm happy.

Okay. But I just want to make sure that I could say Kee.

Oh, everybody calls me Kee.

Okay. Wonderful.

In fact, my legal name is Jonathan Kee Hui Kwan. So I used to go by Jonathan for a long time, but everybody that knew me when I was a kid calls me Kee.

Are you happy that Kee and Peele was a big show? I mean, that really popularized Kee.

Yeah. Kiki Palmer. Oh, yeah. I made a joke. I attended the New York Film Festival, and Jordan Peele was there.

Yeah, you're halfway there.

Kee and Peele, Kiki Palmer. And then maybe I'll just change my name to Kiki Kee, you know?

Okay. So Kee, of every actor and expert we've interviewed, you're going to have, I think, among the wildest story. as far as the amount of ground you've covered in your life. It's almost impossible from where your life started to where it ended up. You even said it in your Oscar speech.

Yeah, I'm a Leon.

You're on the cusp, though, because I'm a Virgo 24th.

My wife says I'm more like a Virgo than I'm a Leon.

Yeah, I could see that.

By the way, your wife has the coolest name of all names, Echo.

Echo, yeah.

What a cool name. That is a good name.

Okay, so you're born in Vietnam in 1971, but your family's Chinese.

Yes. Actually, I was born in 1970.. It's wrong on IMDb.

Oh, wonderful.

It's not easy to change your birth date on IMDb.

I bet not.

Yeah, I tried.

And no one's trying to go older. You'd be the first person trying to go older.

I like a truth. I like authenticity. So, for the longest time, when I decided to get back into acting, I have IMDb Pro. So I messaged them and I go, I want to change my birth year. I sent numerous messages, emails, and it's like, you have to show your passport, all these, like, you know, identification.

Polygraph test?

Yeah, something like that.

But I do imagine most people would have been calling and saying, I was really born in 75.

Of course.

You're for sure the first person in history that wanted to make yourself older.

It's only one year. It's not like a big difference.

It is a big difference in terms of what was happening historically in Saigon. That's one more year of being born into an active war. Yeah. But how did your family end up in Vietnam from China?

It was a great place to do business. My mom was born in Hong Kong. My dad was in mainland China. And it's just for opportunities. They went to Vietnam, Saigon.

Okay, so probably 60s, she was there?

Probably sooner than that. Maybe in the early 50s. Okay, wow. And dad around the same time. And they met and they fell in love.

Nine kids. Wow. Okay, but you hinted at it, right? Which is? you already have family members that are adventurers, risk takers, entrepreneurial.

You know, my parents were doing really well in Vietnam.

What kind of business were they in?

My dad manufactures plastic bags.

Oh, no kidding?

Yeah. And my mom had a little clothing store.

And nine kids?

And nine kids.

That's not possible.

I don't know if they invented condom back then.

Yeah, your dad should have invented it.

Yeah, and so they were really happy.

Monica just really giggled at the thought of a plastic bag condom.

As a condom. That was funny. Wait, what's the span of ages? Like oldest to youngest kids?

My oldest sister right now is 68.

Okay. And are you the youngest?

I'm the seventh in the family.

She's 68 and you're 53 or 44?

Yeah, I'm 53.

53, so she's 15 years older. Okay, so she was born in 55-ish? Did I do that math right?

We're looking at about an 18-year range.

Maybe 56?

56.

Okay, wow. So you've got a full-grown adult sister when you're born? Yes.

I was an uncle when I was 10 years old. Wow. Really? Now I have over 20 nieces and nephews and more than 20 grandnieces and nephews. Oh, my goodness.

If they all just went five times, you had a runaway hit. In what order were you? What number were you?

Seven.

I was doing math when he said that.

I have a younger sister, I have a younger brother who I'm best friends with. He's so supportive. My family has been very proud and very happy for the last two years, and my brother more so than anybody.

Yeah, and he got a shout-out in your speech.

Yeah.

Sounds well-deserved. So, born in there in 1970, you wouldn't have memories, I can't imagine, of wartime in Saigon, do you? Because you're too young.

Yeah, but a lot of people have memories when they were two or three or four. But for some reason, everything that happened in Vietnam, I only have glimpses of it. Going out with my dad on his motorcycle or trying on new clothes at my mom's clothing store. Just like snapshots.

Would your father have been a potential enemy once Saigon fell, and he would have been a capitalist and a business owner, a manufacturer? Was he at risk with that?

There were a large Chinese community living in Saigon. And when the fall of Saigon happened, a lot of those Chinese people were targeted. And also, it was a chaotic time. Disclaimer, Vietnam today is very different. A lot of people go visit every year.

They did stay around for three years after the end of the war, right? Yes. So that would have been the most perilous period for them. Because now it's a communist country and there are entrepreneurial capitalists.

I think they were constantly living in fear. I'm really grateful to them because to get all of us out of Vietnam, we didn't succeed on the first attempt. And back then, a lot of that generation, they would have their savings not in the Vietnamese currency, but in gold. We escaped on a boat. So to get on a boat, every person would have to pay a huge amount in gold sheets.

How come it failed?

We were caught.

The boat got seized or stopped?

Before we made it onto the boat, we were put in jail.

The whole family?

Yeah, the whole family. And then it was not until the second time...

It was a big jail for your family. Yeah.

All 50 of you. Yeah, exactly. And then my parents worked really hard again to try to save up enough money to try the second time. The second time, my parents decided that maybe instead of going all together at once, let's split up. A little smaller group, and then whoever succeeds in getting out, then maybe they can help.

Okay, this explains. Yeah, because mom ends up going to Malaysia with three of your siblings and you and dad and five others go to Hong Kong. Yes.

So my mom and three of my siblings went to Malaysia and then they stayed there for a year and they were granted political asylum and they immigrated to the United States. And they were there for a year when we tried to escape and we ended up in a refugee camp in Hong Kong.

You're seven or eight.

I was seven.

You must have memories of that. We're getting old enough to have memories.

Yeah, I was running around in my house and playing with my friends in Vietnam and Saigon and all of a sudden I find myself surrounded by security guards and police officers and chain link fence. That I didn't have the maturity or the wisdom to understand why.

You're living the life of a prisoner all of a sudden.

Yeah, and we were just in a makeshift refugee camp with a lot of bunk beds. It was just extremely crowded.

Yes, and sanitation was probably terrible.

Yeah, your mom's not there.

My best friend, my little brother, was not there. I was just with my five other siblings and my father.

And you were there for how long, a year?

More than a year.

Did they try to educate you? What happened all day long? How did you spend that time?

Not much. It's not like they cared about schoolwork or anything. We were just waiting. My dad, more than any of us, were trying to work on the paperwork and try to get out of there. And try to get in contact with my mom.

We'll place them everywhere.

So you saw all the correspondence.

And there were records. I found my name and my family's name in that archive.

You're kidding.

It was so emotional. It was just incredible. For the longest time, that experience existed only in my memories. And of course, we talked about it with our families. But it was the first time where I have paperwork, I have proof that happened.

And also the contrast between obviously I would imagine feeling quite forgotten for a year, only to find out later you're a part of this complicated and dynamic part of history that's been recorded probably validates the whole experience in a way.

Absolutely.

A year when you're 7 to 8, it's a long time. It's 15% of your life.

That experience really changed all of us. I was with five of my other siblings and I look at their lives now, and they're so strong-minded, they're so determined, they work really hard. It made them a lot tougher. And I think it really stemmed from that experience going from having a home to losing our home, being locked up in a refugee camp and then coming here.

That's unimaginable. Do you think it's given you all a baseline of gratitude that's a little higher than everyone else's?

Absolutely. That's why, to this day, I'm very grateful. One, to the American government at that time, who allowed us into this country and everything that's happened since.

How was it determined you would go to California?

Because that's where my mom and three of my siblings were living. They were living in Chinatown, Los Angeles. In fact, that archive had that address where my mom was staying at. They needed to contact her and to find out where she was living, so that it made sense for my dad and five of my other siblings and myself to immigrate to the U.S.

You guys would have a place to go specifically.

It reminds you there are real people on the other side of this making those connections. Reaching out, finding the people in America, then connecting them with the people in Hong Kong. People are doing this.

Thank God there are. You land in California, and I have to imagine it's gotta be a tricky time to have come from Vietnam. You're only four years out from this war. that was the most divisive war we've ever had. at that point.

got here? As an eight-year-old, you don't really understand. and especially when you have very protective parents, they kind of shield you from all of that. Living in Chinatown, Los Angeles, was also very beneficial because it's a whole Chinese community there. Insulated from all that news that was going on around the world at that time.

That is wild. And did you fly from Hong Kong to California? Yes.

No more boat rides. Yeah, so it's quite interesting how I was on a boat in the middle of the night escaping Vietnam, arrived in Hong Kong a year in a refugee camp and then I got on a plane to come to Los Angeles.

First plane ever? Yes. Were you excited in a way that you had never been in your life? You must have had a fantasy about America. No.

any of that. Oh, okay. You were probably.

mad. You're like, why am I on a plane?

I was happy because one, I was free and second, I knew that at the end of this flight I would be reuniting with my mom and my brother and my other sisters, who I haven't seen for more than a year.

Yes, you're just so excited, I imagine, for that reunion. Had dad told you anything about America? Like, what.

to expect? No, he didn't even know.

This is so fascinating. It's not like.

there were televisions where we can watch and see what the lives.

in America is like. Yeah, Baywatch wasn't out yet.

Yeah, yeah.

Because if you were born ten years later, you would have known all about Baywatch.

Do you sometimes think about that time and think I can't believe that was my life? that story belongs to me? Like, I would be so disassociated from that, I think. Because it's such a huge deal.

I don't think about that experience often. What I do think about is how lucky I am. How lucky my family is. They're all doing really well. Even during some of my darkest days.

Everyone made it safe. At some point, though, you move up to Sunland. from Chinatown? We moved to.

Monterey Park in the eastern part of Los Angeles. Right by Alhambra? Yes, by Alhambra.

Alhambra has a pretty large Asian population. Yes. Because my great fear for you as a little nine-year-old boy is joining now an elementary school where you don't speak English, you're very other, you represent this war we just had. I'm so scared for any little boy in that situation. Was elementary fine?

For me, it was fine, because I was trying very hard to learn English, to get accustomed to this new life.

And you had a fair amount of classmates that were also.

newly.

Oh, what a relief. This sounds like the ideal. Okay. This is an impossible gap, because really, within four years, you go from a refugee camp to starring in the biggest movie of the year, with the biggest movie star by the biggest director of all time. This is really not a possible experience.

It's pretty insane. I was just being a kid, going to school, and one day, this group of people came to my elementary school, and they had an open call. What? This is a dream!

If I were you, I would actually think, this can't be reality. You're definitely in a simulation. Okay, so you didn't, were you like a class clowny a little bit? I wasn't.

In fact, I wasn't even the one that was auditioning. It was my little brother. His teacher thought he was perfect. Sometimes, even to this day, I wonder why I was chosen and not him, because I think he's so much more talented than me, and he's funny. He makes me laugh all the time, so he was more of a ham than I was.

You're directing him. They should have hired you to direct him.

And the casting director saw me, and I was speaking to my brother in Chinese, in Cantonese. He saw something in me, and many years later, I reunited with our casting director, and he told me that they had a hard time finding the perfect kid to play short round. In fact, they went to London, to Hong Kong, Singapore, everywhere where there was a bigger Chinese community. Because back then, Chinatown Los Angeles was really small, and they didn't think they would find who they were looking for there, so they went everywhere except Chinatown Los Angeles. And they were about to give up, and they said, why don't we just give it one last try?

desperate they were that they were going to random elementary schools. Exactly.

That's not the normal casting. Yeah, exactly.

Especially for a movie of this size.

Oh, my god, this is unreal.

Okay, so you're barking orders at your brother, which is hysterical, and I can see why she or he would have seen, oh, this is what we need. This is a little guy who's running the show. Yeah, dynamic. And short round was a total survivor.

I was precocious. Yes!

You then auditioned.

Then I auditioned. They gave me the sight, and I could barely speak English at all, just very little, and then my reading comprehension was even worse. Of course. So I was saying the lines and really messing it up, saying like, trying to even understand what I was saying. I'm not even saying the lines, I'm reading the lines.

a series of sounds. Exactly.

And he saw something in that, and he says, Key, why don't you put that away, and let's just talk. Who's he? Mike Fenton. He cast E.T., The Goonies. Oh, this guy's a genius.

Oh, my God.

What are your parents thinking right now?

They had no clue what was going on, and they could barely speak any English when they answered that phone. The first.

Indiana Jones had come out. We haven't seen it. But you knew about it,

right? No, we didn't know. I mean, don't forget, we're living in Chinatown. We're very insulated by this small Chinese community. So we've never seen Star Wars.

this is not.

scared. Yeah, like, are we getting taken advantage?

of? Yes. We didn't think much of it. They didn't think I would land the role. Of course.

God. It's great you didn't know. Because you would have maybe felt a lot of pressure if you knew who Spielberg was. Yeah, that's why when I walked.

into the room, it was this bunch of guys with a mustache and a beard. Yeah. I didn't know their names. I didn't know any of the work at that time. I didn't know that I was meeting and talking to three of the most successful people.

And written by Lawrence Kasdan. Impossible. One of the greatest writers of all time. Okay, so you go in there and clearly you charmed them in that audition. Where.

was it filmed? It was filmed in Sri Lanka. So, after my audition for Steven and George and Harrison, a few weeks later, I was on a flight. Again, my second time being on a flight to Sri Lanka. The first time I was on a flight was from Hong Kong to LA.

They're serving you Coca-Colas and nuts and all this stuff. Sundays. And what's mom thinking? How's mom explaining this to you? Because you're probably looking at her like, how is this happening?

just really happy for me and proud. My parents gave up so much. In fact, when we got to the US, my parents were heavily in debt. Because they just didn't have enough money to get all of us out. so they were borrowing money from their friends.

It must have been an insane amount of money relative to what they were making by working. Here's what's so great.

about Lucas and Spielberg. I was 12 years old. We didn't have an agent or a manager. We didn't have anybody to look after us. No lawyer.

No! They gave you a point of the movie? Yeah, I was able to.

cheer in the success of the movie. That's why, when the movie came out and became one of the biggest movies in 1984, not long after that, I got a check in the mail. And that check was so nice that I was able to help my parents pay off the debt. We were renting a little house in Chinatown and I was able to use that money to buy a house in Monterey Park where my parents and all my siblings can live a bit more comfortable.

Again, the range of luck you have. You've got the worst luck and the greatest luck all within the span.

of four years. And I think that's what makes it a great life. And not only that, when the movie came out, our world premiere was in London, attended by Princess Diana and Prince Charles at that time, who is King Charles now. But going from a refugee camp, and I'm standing in line with Spielberg and Lucas and shaking hands with Princess Diana. They should make a movie.

about your life. I want to watch this movie. I want to see a little boy.

experience all this. Oh, I love this. That makes me love Steven Spielberg. They were so generous.

Lucas had done that too with the Star Wars cast. He gave them a percentage.

of their.

But everyone in Star Wars was also a no-name actor and he gave them some of the.

toy rights. That is so rare. You have to fight for it. Oh, my god. And be a profit participant.

say no and walk away five or.

six times. It was like on their own accord. It was out of their generosity.

Okay, so again, you have no awareness of who Harrison Ford is either at this point. So you arrive in Sri Lanka and you start working with him immediately? Yes. And is he intimidating? He is a very big man with a husky voice.

No, he was not. He was so friendly.

And playful? And playful.

and humble and kind. I would always play with him. Yeah. And he would make me laugh. All of us were staying in a hotel in Sri Lanka.

Ki, this is bonkers.

This is the best story I've ever heard. This is so special. And I know you know it because you reflect on it a lot and you give a lot of gratitude vocally.

But how wonderful. I guess I have such distrust of anything good that I would have had a hard time that whole experience accepting it was real. I would keep waiting to.

almost wake up. As a kid, you don't really know how special that is. Of course. And so to me, I thought, this is how movie making is. You know, like from now on, every movie that I make is going to be like.

this. The star will teach me how to swim.

Yeah. And you would walk on these big scale, beautiful sets. You get treated really well.

You'd have 200 days to shoot. Yeah.

So I thought every movie was like, and then very quickly I realized, oh wow, it doesn't always work like that. It's crazy.

how good you are in the movie. having never done it. I really think.

it's because of Stephen's direction. He's so good with kids. He would tell me specifically how to say my lines. And he would give me directions where, if I just follow that, then I can do what he wants. He was just the kindest.

So it was fun. You liked acting.

Because of that experience. That's the reason why I fell in love with acting. I remember we were shooting in London, Elstreet Studios. And that's where we built all those stages. I didn't even know this, because I hadn't seen Star Wars.

They must have all loved you. I think they were all there.

for Harrison Ford.

So, based on that experience, did it occur to you like, well, I want to do this more? Or were you thinking of it more like, wow, this weird, magical lottery ticket fell on my lap. That was that? Or what was your thought when that movie wrapped?

I wasn't thinking about whether I want to do this as a career. When Indiana Jones came out, I was immediately offered to do The Goonies. And I loved making movies because it got me out of school. I didn't have to spend eight hours in school. I get to travel to these wonderful places and treated really well.

when that movie came out and all of a sudden, all the kids in school now know you're in the biggest movie of the summer?

It felt really good. Nobody paid attention to me prior to that. I was just one of 30-something students there. And I couldn't even get my teacher's attention. And all of a sudden, I was the star in the classroom.

Yeah. Were any boys jealous of your attention and cruel to you?

That I don't know. You know, as a 12-year-old, you're not going to think, are people jealous of you? Well, you went to go do more.

movies. You didn't have time to pay attention to the kids in school. You're the bully. Yeah.

I was skinny. I was tiny. And I think it's because of that that I never got any bullying.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that did happen to a quadrant of kids. They were so tiny that there was no glory in pushing them around.

That's so true. He's so easy to beat up. What's in front.

of that, right? Because I've always been humongous and people think, oh, that must have been so nice. She probably never got picked. And I'm like, no, no. The opposite thing happened, which is like, boys from older grades that were afraid to fight anyone in their grade, I'll pick a fight with this younger kid, but he's big.

Armchair Experts, if you dare.

Okay, so you immediately go into Goonies. You're now with another really spectacular director, Richard Donner. And he took a real shine to you, right?

It was a very different experience, going from indie to the Goonies. Because, one, I, was the only kid on set. So I got all the attention, all the love. And all of a sudden, I walk on the Goonies set, I was with six other kids. You're one.

of six kids. And

they all knew what they were doing. Even though it was their first movie. Like, Sean Astin grew up in a movie family. Josh grew up in a movie family. Jeff Cohen was so awesome and cute.

We were like constantly jumping.

on him, screaming on set, overlapping each other all the time. Now I have to fight for attention. Which is something I was very familiar with because I grew up in a big family.

Right. And how were you getting along with the other kids? Obviously, you and Cohen became really close. Jeff, who played Chunk, you're lifetime friends. Yes.

We're best friends. We see each other all the time.

Isn't that awesome? Chunk became a lawyer? That's crazy.

But the reason why he became a lawyer, he wanted to be an actor. And when he hit puberty, all of a sudden, he wasn't this fat, cute kid anymore. And he couldn't get a job. It's hard to go from a kid actor to an adult actor. And he reached out to Dick Donner and says, what can I do?

And he went to maybe USC, then UCLA?

UC Berkeley, UCLA. Oh yeah, Berkeley.

and then UCLA for law school.

There's all these angels in this story. It's lovely.

That's why it's very heartwarming to see how successful these people are, yet, at the same time, they're so generous and kind.

Man, okay, so, was that movie fun though? Of course you were feeling probably the least prepared or the least professional, but were you having fun? Oh my gosh, it was incredible. Where were you? at, Oregon or something?

We shot the exterior stuff in Oregon, then we shot the majority of the movie at the Warner Brothers lot. We built the pirate ship in the biggest soundstage, I believe it's stage.

16.

was heated. Oh!

And Harrison Ford taught you how to swim. so you're set? One day we're.

walking on the pirate ship, the next day we're going down a water slide. I mean, it was like a kid's dream. Yes! Yeah,

wow. And how did you get on with everybody? I imagine Brolin was much older than you guys. He was like the older brother.

And we spent a lot of time in a trailer doing school work. together. We were like a big family. So, as with any other family, there was a lot of fighting, there was a lot of love, there was a lot of making fun, of, laughter. We had all of that.

I imagine your on-camera personas or roles that were assigned to you bleed into the dynamic outside of the set.

When you're a kid, you're basically being.

yourself. Did you have a crush on Martha?

Plimpton? Not Martha. I was too young. You were. Were you 13??

I had major crushes at that age.

You were a little bit ahead of sketch.

Again, I was enormous. I think it was later on that I thought Cary Green was really pretty.

Yeah, she was. She is. So, okay, that movie comes out, and now this is another hit movie. It wasn't.

as big of a hit as people thought it was. You have Dick Donna as the director, Steven Spielberg as the producer. I think we made around $66-67 million dollars, versus Indiana Jones, and the Temple of Doom made $200 million. But, it was.

also 1985, and $60 million in 1985 was still a major. It was profitable. But I know what you're saying, there's a handful of movies like this where we all think they were even bigger than they were. The classic example is Shawshank Redemption. Every human being has seen that movie, and it made like $8 million at the box office.

a hit on home video. And that's what Goonies was. It became a huge hit on home.

video. I bet just as many people walking the planet today have seen Goonies as they have Temple of Doom.

Yes. If not more. In fact, there are more Goonies fans than there are Indiana Jones fans. I bet.

It's a very seminal movie.

It's one of those movies where you grew up watching it. It made a huge impact on your childhood, and it changed you. And it was.

beautifully assembled, and the archetypes were almost any moviegoer could find themselves in that group of kids. That's the genius.

of that story and that screenplay by Chris Columbus. It is.

I think lesser writers tend to write multiple characters, but none of them are very clearly differentiated. That's the mark of Christopher Columbus. Those are very specific archetypes that play perfectly off each other.

And any kid watching that movie, you can relate to any one of those characters.

And even at times, right? Like, I feel like Chunk sometimes, and then also I feel like Brolin. at times. I feel like.

your mouth, or Mikey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the reasons why that movie became a huge hit is really the direction of Dick Donner. Back then, it is unheard of to do a movie where you have overlapping dialogue. Because of the editing, so you always have one actor finish their dialogue before another actor say his.

And just kill the editor later. That's the editor's problem.

I'm sure they had so many headaches putting that movie together.

So that one comes out, and now I imagine you're a bit more savvy. You've now been at this for a couple years. And you go to the premiere, and it's out again, and you're even more popular at school. Then did you start thinking, well, this will just continue like.

this? Not yet, because I was still in school. So I was busy all the time. If I'm not on a set, I was in school trying to have a normal life. That's why I never had any real friends in school.

Well, that's a question I had. Even as an adult, it can be kind of sad that you go on a movie set, and you're with people for three months, and you're as close as people can be. And then you return home to your real life, and you just don't see them anymore. And you're like, well, what happened?

And then you go back to school, and all of a sudden, you find yourself kind of like the new kid on the block. You don't have any friends. And a lot of times what happens is, when I first go back to school after a hiatus, everybody would have a lot of interest in me. It's like, oh my gosh! Like, key, right?

By the way, and your life at this point is already in this pattern of extreme highs and lows. I wonder if you've even gotten addicted to that cycle. Does that make?

any sense? Wow, that's a great question. I am an.

arousal junkie, because my childhood was all these peaks and valleys, and everything was really heightened. And I kind of crave that level of drama.

a bit. You're absolutely right. In some fashion, I grew accustomed to that. It's kind of like a musician when you're performing on stage, in front of 70,000 people, and you hear, like, all these cheers and applause, and all of a sudden you go backstage, or go back to the hotel room, and it's just dead quiet. It's such a huge contrast.

point, have an agent, you have the whole team, but you end up doing, interestingly, shortly after The Goonies, you do 40 episodes of a Taiwanese show where you're speaking Mandarin. What was that experience like? Because that's got to be a, I don't want to say a far fall, but a much different experience.

It was very different. If you look at my resume, I basically accepted everything that was offered to me. I never said no to anything. After The Goonies, I did a television show for CBS, and it was after that, then it started drying up. And then here was an opportunity from Taiwan.

back. That sounds lonely. Even.

though I'm Chinese, you know, I grew up basically in the States. Yeah. I've grown accustomed to what life is like in America. You're.

other, even though you're, in theory, Chinese ethnicity. When I go.

there, and I think the Asian diaspora in the States knows this, for example, when I go back to China or to Hong Kong, they never look at you as one of their own. You're like a foreigner. So when I went to Taiwan, they thought I was American. And I don't read or write Chinese. So it was a challenging time to do a 40 episode television show, because one, I didn't speak Mandarin at that time, so I have to learn the language.

dialogue orally. When you're.

16,, 17,, 18,. your memory works.

great. Yeah.

Now, I learn my dialogue way in advance, you know. Did you notice?

any tension in the family? Was there ever any jealousy between the nine siblings? Were they like, well...

But they pluck him out of this group. No, no.

We were never competitive with one another. In fact, it was quite the opposite, because I started to make a lot of money. So when my siblings got a little older and got their driver's license, I was able to buy a car.

for them. Yeah, what a hero.

All of this, you know, comes with a lot of benefits. That's why they're all very happy and very proud of what I've done.

But that's impressive, because if I was the younger brother and I was the one auditioning the first time for Indiana Jones, and then this bizarre turn of events happened, I'd be.

that's my bus ticket. I bought the bus ticket.

Yeah, that's mine. Or lottery ticket. I should be going.

there. Just quickly, back to the Taiwanese experience. Yeah, I have a friend who's Mexican, but he was born in Chicago. And he tells me when he goes to Mexico, even though he speaks Spanish, he's almost in another world. It's almost worse.

entire life, until recently, I always felt like an outsider. When I go back, they treat me as if I'm a foreigner. When I was growing up in the States, I was treated like I was an American. So for the longest time, I always felt rootless. Especially because I'm Chinese, but I was born in Vietnam.

identity, this identity we construct is the core of what makes us.

feel safe. I think I spent my entire life searching for my identity.

and never got it. I think it can be a much harder road. when it's as complicated as yours is. It's not.

until recently that I'm very comfortable with who I am. And also, for the very first time, even though I've been in this business for 40 years, it was the first time that I felt Hollywood has finally accepted me, that I belong. You're.

not an accident. You're not a lottery ticket. By the way, that's what I'm not putting a fine enough point on. You're spectacular. I mean, the fact that you got plucked out of school, now that's luck.

When Indian Goonies came out, at that time, it's great, because it's current news. This just happened to you. Then, can you imagine what it's like five years later, ten years later, twenty years later, thirty years later, when you are in your forties and people still talk about the work that you done when you were twelve?

years old. This is, I think, a uniquely hard experience to be very recognizable and famous and not working. Yeah. We just interviewed Chris Pine and his father was on Chips and he was huge. Everyone in the country knew who his father was and then he had a long period of not working and he had to just get normal jobs.

I've done Comic Cons for many years, where I'm signing autographs on a picture, you know, I was a kid. Yeah. I feel grateful and blessed that I have those two movies. But for the longest time, I always wished that I have something as an adult where people recognize me, for. I said it in my acceptance speech at the Golden Globes and there was something that scared the shit out of me, because it was something that I never shared before, but for the longest time.

Your experience can only be compared to the 16-year-old that wins the Olympics in gymnastics and now has the rest of their life where there'll be no more Olympics and there'll be no more gold medals and there'll be no more Wheaties commercials. Right. It's a unique thing to peak so early. I think it could be torturous. For a long.

time, you know, there was like rumors how, oh, we're gonna do a Goonies sequel, and I was just praying to God and Buddha, please let that come to fruition, because I always thought that would kickstart my acting career again. And every few years, there will be rumors, you know, Warner Brothers or Spielberg would hire writers and now we have a script and I'll always be holding my breath and it's like oh, please let the phone ring and tell me that we're gonna do this again, you know? It never came to pass. So at.

a certain age, you have to make the very painful decision that you're gonna stop pursuing acting. Yeah. This becomes an interesting chapter in anyone's life, even if you didn't have the previous chapter, but you do, you decide to go to USC.

That was one of the most difficult decisions that I've ever had to make in my entire life. I was in my early twenties. It was like right.

after high school. You're already in your backup plan. Yeah, everybody.

had their entire life ahead of them and I had it behind me. I find myself going, oh my gosh, there is no road for me to move forward. Right. I can never hit that success. The idea of stepping away, I remember I was 23 years old.

roles. It's on now, VHS. It's actually probably gaining some popularity.

in weird ways. And everywhere I go, people go, oh my god, you were so great. What are you doing now? What can we look forward to next?

Oh, it's soul crushing.

It is. And the pressure. Of course, your identity is all messed up, because if you have such big success when you're a kid, you're almost chasing, going backwards. Like, how can you ever move forward in life if the best is behind you? Yeah, and you.

had an identity that was defendable, which was I'm a movie star. For a couple years you were a movie star. And then, when you're 21 and someone asks you, well, I'm still a movie star. Now what? But I'm not.

Yeah, you graduate and then you see your friends, your classmates, moving on to great and better things.

I'm surprised you didn't turn into an alcoholic.

No, no, I didn't. You know, surprisingly, I never drank when I was younger. Not until later years. I drink.

now. Yeah. One thing I was going to say. of course, you're as close as you are to your family because, as you were saying, you have this really obscure identity. You're not Vietnamese.

Also, when you grew up in a big family. you don't need friends outside. Your siblings are your friends. Yeah. Family has always been a huge part of who I am, because they were my friends and if I needed anything, I can always come to them.

What was your explanation for why you weren't working? Did you come up with some concoction of like, is it because I'm not cute anymore? I'm not.

a kid anymore? I blame myself. I thought I wasn't tall enough. I was never classically trained as an actor, so I thought my acting wasn't good enough. When you're fighting for a role and you don't get it, you feel, there's gotta be something wrong with me.

And we gotta add, in, which you're probably not even taking into account at that time, there's like two roles a year for Asian men. Exactly. There's nothing. How many are coming up in?

the 90s? I did American, Born Chinese, and the show runner, Calvin Yu, used to work at the mail room of an agency and it was his job to go through all the scripts that comes in and then catalog them. and he said, back then, he went through a hundred scripts and out of those one hundred he'd be hard pressed to find one meaningful Asian character. Yeah. Right.

I don't know, I mean, God bless any Asian actor that gave it a shot. All the roles are for me and I was completely hopeless for nine years and I looked the part.

I can't even comprehend.

having had the exact same experience, but also on top of it, I'm Asian, I know like, yeah, two fucking opportunities.

a year. So you auditioned for nine years before you got that first role? Yeah. What made you want to go on? I was like.

it's never going to happen, I accept that, but I will be so disappointed in myself when I die if I didn't try it. It wasn't even that I thought I could do it, it was, I'm going to prevent this enormous regret, which is, if I give up on this, I'll be so disappointed in myself. So I'm just kind of wallowing in this sea of like, well, it's not going to happen and I'm never going to quit, so that I don't regret it. but then probably I'm going to regret having tried this for my whole life. So, yeah, it was just like a constant debate in my head of whether we're going to keep going.

or not. That was the same reason why I decided to get back into acting. Really? It was because I was turning 50 and it was bothering me. It was eating at me and I was so afraid.

And coward's the operative word, because that's the exact same word I would use. We don't want to die as cowards and I think that's okay.

A coward to yourself. It's one thing to be monitoring to the outside like. I don't want to look like a coward to the outside, but if you yourself feel like a coward, that's a good motivation. Yeah, it's like one of the.

oldest stories told. Are you going to be a coward? Are you going to risk failure and maybe do something?

But you know, that's worse when you think you're a coward versus someone telling you that you're a coward. Exactly. Because if someone's telling you that's just a one-time thing, but if you're thinking mentally inside, it eats at you. It doesn't let go.

And it's one of the most shameful assessments of yourself you can have, and that's interesting. That's kind of a product of story. We like heroes and we like people who go after it, and it's just interesting how internal that is. for us. The fear of being a coward is very powerful.

turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made in life. It gave me the knowledge that I needed. And at that time, I didn't know. Despite.

having been in these blockbusters. And when you.

an actor, you step in front of the camera, your perspective is very narrow. You only see your fellow actors. You see the director. You see the producer. And you don't really quite understand.

from the inside out. Yeah. It's kind.

of like, when you have a spotlight on you, you can't really see the audience. And going to film school expanded my perspective. Right.

And you learned to edit. there. I learned.

to edit. I learned about camera. I learned about lighting. I learned about sound. I learned about the casting process.

A great experience for all actors would be to be on the casting side for a minute. Because it depersonalizes the experience. You see quickly, people are right or wrong for stuff. You can't act your way out of being wrong for the role. And so it's not personal.

You know, something weird happened on my way here. I was driving, and I was by myself. And all of a sudden, for some reason, flashback to the days when I was much younger, driving to an audition. Because I've never been here before. And it was very similar.

voice. Everyone thinks that. No, no, no, no.

Like, you guys. Like, Dax, oh my god. You have one of those voices where it's so freaking, soothing. It's like, ask me anything and I will tell you everything.

Well, thank you so much. And I'm so sorry you felt that familiar feeling on your way here. I know that feeling very well. That's funny. But you learned to edit.

is very fascinating. I studied Taekwondo right after Indiana Jones. And for the whole.

ride, right? You never stopped doing it. So at some point out of USC, you start fight choreographing. Yeah. That's incredible.

right out of film school and I knew an action director named Kuo Yuan in Hong Kong, because many years ago, he came to me and wanted me to be in his movie. I couldn't do it because I was under contract for CBS at that time. But then we kept in touch. We stayed friends. And one day he found out that I graduated from film school.

Oh, my. I was doing fight.

choreography. I was an assistant action choreographer. There were three of us and we were in charge of the Wolverine mystique fight in the Statue of Liberty. Wow. It was on that set.

Kevin Feige. Oh, because he was like an associate.

producer on that. He was an associate producer on that. I met him there and little did I know that 22 years later, we would be working.

together. That is so wild. He'd be running Marvel, you'd be an Academy Award winner. All of it's impossible.

The impossible can.

be possible. So you stayed busy for the next 19 years doing all kinds of things. I was learning.

I was happy for a period of time because I had a career behind the camera. I was working in Hong Kong. I was busy.

That's all we need to be, kind of.

After a while, something just nagged at me and I didn't know what it was. I didn't understand it. The satisfaction diminished over time and I felt like the road is getting narrower and I can almost see an end.

When had you met Echo? In 2002?

when I was working for Wong Kar-wai.

You met her on a set? At his production.

office in Shanghai. What was she doing? She was working for the management department at that time. She was also working for the producers. When you're working in Asia, there's no one job description.

Exactly. And did you guys kind of.

fall in love immediately? It was one of those where, when we first met, right off the bat, we just talked non-stop. Our conversation can go on hours and hours. I didn't know that I was falling in love with her until.

it.

You know, we were in Shanghai at that time, and then I got called back to Hong Kong and it was that separation that I felt. Wow, I really miss her. Aww. And I felt that, you know, that butterfly that you have in your stomach that you have.

when you're in love. Had she grown up seeing you as Dada? She didn't. A lot of people.

in China didn't grow up watching the 80s movie. It was not until years later. Our first time meeting, because she knew that I was coming in, she saw a movie that I did and she asked the filmmakers, did they do something to his voice? Did they run his voice through like a synthesizer? Is that why he sounds like that?

Oh, my god. No wonder you're self-conscious about your voice on podcast.

Yeah, your primary love was critical when you met. How soon after that do you guys get married? Two years later. I gather from your speech, she was weirdly supportive throughout this whole journey. I ask her.

all the time. We've been together for 22 years now. There was not a year that went by that she didn't believe in me. There were many times in our time together, I felt like she deserved somebody better. Yeah.

you got angry, because now you're going to disappoint her. She has a belief in you that you don't have in yourself, so you're going to disappoint her. And she's betting on the wrong horse. That's a.

great way to put it. I felt like she bet on the wrong horse.

That's heartbreaking when you love somebody and you feel like you can't live up to their belief in you. From day.

one. when we were together, she said, you're gonna be.

I hope she gave you the biggest fucking. I told you so.

that's ever been given.

She should wake you up.

one morning and just go, I told you so. She earned it. She has a great eye. Many years ago, she saw a television show with Eddie Redmayne. This was before Eddie Redmayne became Eddie Redmayne.

Stay tuned for Armchair Expert.

if you dare.

Okay, so in 2018, you see Crazy Rich Asians, our friend John directed that.

Oh, you know, John Chu? Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

He's a USC boy.

Yes, he is.

Was there any overlap? No. Even though you're older, you went later.

No, no, no. He was much later.

He was there when Laura was there.