Ke Huy Quan is in the eye of the storm. When he was barely a teenager, he was a global icon โ we all grew up gasping at his adventures, from battling Thuggees in a cave system lousy with voodoo in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom , to being menaced by Robert Davi and Joey Pants in The Goonies. Those blockbusters put him on the map. But after decades of quiet, during which a retired-from-acting Quan suspected that his Hollywood journey had stopped for good, that storm is whirling again, fiercer than ever.
Good things keep happening to him. And it seems like the whole world is cheering him on. And, now in his fifties, he wants to do everything, preparing to fulfil some long-harboured dreams. The first: to star in a high-octane Hollywood action flick. The forthcoming Love Hurts , his first leading role in America, is the culmination of decades of action training by Quan. Directed by John Wick stunt-maestro Jonathan Eusebio, it has been an experience that, yes, hurt โ but was worth every bruise.
Does it feel like life has totally changed? I still live in the same house. I still drive the same car. I still go to the same places. My wife, Echo, helps me. Why are you asking me? They came back for a third time.
So I was having trouble picking my next project. Steven was very generous. Do it. Talking of Spielberg, your first-ever movie โ and your first taste of action โ was Temple Of Doom. It was my first exposure to action. I still remember his name โ Philip Tan. That was my first time doing it on camera, and I loved it. And to this day I know how to swim because of him.
Laughs He has great forms, but I can only do a couple of styles. We would go to taekwondo classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then on Tuesday and Thursday, we would watch Hong Kong movies. I even went and bought a sandbag and put it in my backyard: we would go to the television and rewind the sequences that we loved, watch them again and then go out and try to do those moves. I really wanted to go and make action movies. Unfortunately, nobody hired me. And I made two movies that I really love, but they were low-budget, independent action movies that nobody really saw.
