Ke Huy Quan Shares The Film That Introduced Him To His First Friendships

Ke Huy Quan credits his early career as a Hollywood child star with introducing him to his first group of close friends.

The Chinese American actor, along with his parents and eight siblings, fled his home in Saigon for a Hong Kong refugee camp in 1978 after the end of Vietnam War. When he was 8, he and his family immigrated to Los Angeles, where he launched his Hollywood career as a child actor.

On the Sept. 27 edition of Sunday Sitdown, Quan recalled to TODAY’s Willie Geist how he landed the role of Short Round, Harrison Ford’s sidekick, in the 1984 blockbuster “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

During his audition for the movie, Quan, who grew up speaking Cantonese, said he improvised when his English failed him.

“I remember saying like, ‘You cheat, Dr. Jones. You cheat!’ And (Ford) says, ‘Can you prove that I cheated?’ And then the more he challenged me, the more I ran out of words,” Quan recalled, laughing.

“I didn’t have any English words left to challenge him, so the only thing I did was I challenged him right back but in Cantonese,” he added.

It was Quan’s next movie, the 1985 kids adventure “The Goonies,” that changed his social life, he said.

The movie, which co-starred Martha Plimpton, Sean Astin, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Josh Brolin and Jeff Cohen, followed a close-knit group of friends who discover a treasure map and set out to find the fabled fortune of a pirate named One-Eyed Willy.

“I never had friends growing up because I come from such a big family,” said Quan, who recalled bonding with his young co-stars.

“We had such an amazing time together, and they didn’t treat me like an outsider. They treated me like I was one of their own,” Quan added.

The movie made such an impact, Quan borrowed from its “Goonies never say die” catchphrase for the title of his 2026 memoir, “Never Say Die.”

Quan starred in a few more projects as a young adult, including a role on the ABC sitcom “Head of the Class,” before the industry offers dried up.

“At that time, I didn’t understand it. I thought I would have an incredible career. I mean, I just came off of two big movies,” Quan said.

“I remember being really depressed, being, you know, dejected,” he added.

For the new two decades, Quan busied himself studying film at the University of Southern California and working behind the scenes on movies.

In 2022, he played Waymond Wang, a laundromat owner who battles the IRS, in the comedy-drama “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

He won an Academy Award for the role.

For Quan, he said his career arc is a metaphor for the American Dream, the story of someone who is “given an opportunity to try, to fail, to get back up and try again.”

“When you think about my story, how improbable that was — how can this guy, who, yes, experienced some success when he was 12 years old and then disappeared for decades, how can he possibly come back with this little movie and win an Oscar?” he said.

“I look back in my early years, late teens, early 20s when I was struggling, when I was desperately wanting an opportunity,” he added. “Now having the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m so grateful for everything that has happened.”