Ke Huy Quan has revealed how a surprise six-figure check from his first film role reshaped his family’s future.
The 55-year-old actor, who broke through as Short Round in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was only 12 years old during production and had no idea that substantial residuals payments existed beyond standard acting fees. That innocence made the discovery in his family’s kitchen all the more staggering.
Quan recounted the moment in his new memoir, Never Say Die, describing how he found his parents waiting for him one afternoon. “Mom was holding an envelope with my name printed across it. Dad had the papers that had been inside,” he wrote in the book via the outlet. “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 sum arrived at a time when profit-sharing deals were virtually unheard of for child actors, let alone first-time performers. Quan emphasized the rarity of Lucasfilm’s gesture in his memoir: “Back then, almost no actors got a piece of a movie’s profits. Even today, only the biggest stars do. That a kid like me, making his first film, would be included in something like that was unheard of.”
He added that the film’s commercial certainty made the payment even more remarkable. “And Temple of Doom wasn’t some small movie no one was expected to see. It was the sequel to a massive hit, a movie everyone knew would make a lot of money. That made their gesture even more generous.”
The actor described the payout as transformative for his entire household, calling the small share “life-changing for my family.”
Quan’s memoir also revisits a bruising encounter from the 2023 SAG Awards, where a veteran actor he had long admired allegedly mocked his appearance during a photo request. “I spotted a well-known actor I’d respected for years standing right behind me,” he wrote. “Without thinking too much about it, I asked if we could take a picture together. I held the phone out between us, angled it back toward our faces, and leaned in.”
The Everything Everywhere All at Once star explained that he had “made one of my silly faces” for the snapshot, prompting a harsh reaction from the unnamed celebrity. “He looked at me for a beat, then said sharply, ‘Why did you make that stupid face?’ I laughed, a little surprised and not quite sure what to make of it,” Quan wrote. “He shook his head and added, ‘You’re not going to win tonight with that stupid face.'”
Quan noted that the exchange went unnoticed by surrounding guests, and the two parted ways without further incident.
The memoir marks another milestone in a career resurgence that saw Quan capture the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2023, decades after his initial Hollywood breakthrough opposite Harrison Ford.
