Long before he received an Academy Award for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Ke Huy Quan earned a paycheck that transformed his family's future. In his latest memoir, Never Say Die, the actor discloses that his initial residuals payment for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom amounted to $100,000.
Quan was a kid when he portrayed Short Round, Harrison Ford’s sidekick, in the 1984 hit movie. He states that he was aware he would receive payment for the work, but he never anticipated residuals. The check came roughly two years after he signed, and he remembers entering the family kitchen to see his parents at the table, his mother gripping an envelope addressed to him.
He said, “They were both smiling, the kind of smile that comes from surprise and disbelief mixed together. They handed everything to me. It was a check from Lucasfilm. It was for almost $100,000, an amount that didn’t make any sense to me.”
The film itself more than justified the goodwill. Temple of Doom cost roughly $28 million to make and went on to gross more than $333 million worldwide.
The memoir also reflects on Quan's bond with Harrison, whom he calls an ‘older brother’ figure. He writes that Steven would tell crew members to “send Ke over” when he was in a bad mood, a detail Quan says he didn't know about until later. He only noticed that Harrison seemed to soften whenever he walked up.
Quan's journey has turned into one of Hollywood's most praised revivals. Following a series of roles as a child and adolescent, such as in The Goonies and Head of the Class, he took a break from acting for almost twenty years and operated behind the scenes as a stunt coordinator and assistant director. His performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, making him the first actor born in Vietnam to achieve this.
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