Oscars 2023: Ke Huy Quan Wins Best Supporting Actor; Watch His Emotional Speech [Video]

Ke Huy Quan took home the best supporting actor trophy for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” at the 95th Academy Awards Sunday.

The 51-year-old Vietnamese-American actor, who returned to acting in A24’s absurdist comedy-drama film after decades, earned his first-ever Oscar win Sunday. He beat “The Banshees of Inisherin” co-stars Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, “Causeway’s” Brian Tyree Henry, and “The Fabelmans” star Judd Hirsch.

During his speech, Quan got emotional as he looked back on his journey as an Asian actor striving to make the “American dream” come true as well as his past experience as a Vietnamese refugee.

When the actor took the stage at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, he began his speech by giving a shoutout to his 84-year-old mother, who was watching at home. “Mom, I just won an Oscar!” he said before the crowd erupted in cheers.

“My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp. And somehow, I ended up here on Hollywood‘s biggest stage. They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I cannot believe it’s happening to me. This — this is the American dream,” Quan continued, tearing up.

Quan is the second actor of Asian descent to win in the category following Haing Ngor, a Chinese-Cambodian refugee, who won for his debut acting role as Dith Pran in the 1984 drama “The Killing Fields,” according to NBC News.

Quan nabbed several accolades for his role as Michelle Yeoh’s character Evelyn Wang’s goofy husband, Waymond Wang. Among those awards include outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where he became the first Asian to win in the category, as well as the best supporting actor award at the Golden Globes, New York Film Critics Circle Awards, and the Gotham Independent Film Awards.

Quan first rose to fame as a child star, playing alongside Harrison Ford in 1984’s “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and appearing in 1985’s “The Goonies.” But he opted to stop acting due to the lack of film roles for Asian people during that time.

“Hollywood didn’t want me. There were no roles for me, so I spent the majority of my time in my late teens and early 20s just waiting for the phone to ring, and it rarely rang,” Quan revealed at The Hollywood Reporter’s “Actors Roundtable” in January. “The difficult part was to say goodbye to the dream that I always wanted, but it was just difficult to be an Asian actor at that time.”

Before he returned to acting in 2021 for his role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Quan worked behind the scenes as a stunt choreographer and an assistant director, working on projects such as “X-Men,” “2046” and “The One.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Quan revealed that he didn’t think about getting back into acting until the blockbuster hit “Crazy Rich Asians” came out in 2018 and grossed a total of $239 million at the box office.

“I realized that Hollywood has changed, dramatically. They’re giving more opportunities [to] a wider group of people. It was then when I said, ‘Maybe I should try acting again,'” he said.