Ke Huy Quan Has a Black Belt and "Finally" Gets to Be an Action Star in Love Hurts
The Oscar winner told Jimmy Fallon it was director Steven Spielberg who encouraged him to star in the new action-comedy.
Forty years after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, Ke Huy Quan is "finally" a proper action movie star.
The Oscar-winning actor appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on February 5 to discuss his knockout new movie, Love Hurts — the kind of role he says he's dreamed about since he was a kid.
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Ke Huy Quan got a black belt after Temple of Doom
Quan got a second-degree black belt in taekwondo after doing some fighting in Temple of Doom as a child.
"I studied martial arts, when I was young and got a black belt, I wanted to star in my own action movie. So now I finally got my opportunity," he told Jimmy Fallon. "I wasn't going to let my stunt double have all the fun! He can do the stunts, I want to do all the fights myself."
In the 1990s, Quan took a break from acting and enrolled in the film program at the University of Southern California. He graduated in 1999 and "started working for some really fun and great people,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2022, including a productive professional relationship with action choreographer Corey Yuen.
“He took me under his wing and started teaching me about action and action sequences and how to choreograph them,” he explained to EW. Quan and Yuen worked on fight scenes for X-Men, 2001's The One starring Jet Li, with Yuen eventually bringing Quan on board as an assistant director for the critically-acclaimed romantic drama 2046.
Quan is no stranger to throwing punches on set. He was a fight sequence choreographer for 2000's X-Men movie, which Fallon showed a picture of him on set facing off against Hugh Jackman's stunt double. The Goonies star has worked on action movies, but never dreamed he would star in one, as he revealed to Fallon.
"I mean, to be honest. I wanted to, I fantasized about it," he said. "But now I'm finally, starring in my own movie, which is cool."
Ke Huy Quan got Love Hurts advice from Steven Spielberg
When Quan received the script for Love Hurts, he was unsure if he should star in the project. So he reached out to his friend and mentor, Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg — who directed Quan in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — for some advice.
"The action genre is something that I love, and every action movie that I've seen over the last few decades, none of the action stars looked like me," the actor told Fallon. "So when I read the script, even though I loved it, I didn't think I was right for it."
"This was right after the Oscars. I was so worried about disappointing all those people who were rooting for me," he confessed. "So then I reached out to the big man [Spielberg], I told him that this is a Universal Studios picture, it's theatrical release, I pitch him the story, And he says, 'Ke, that sounds great. You should do it.' So he encouraged me to say yes."
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What movie did Ke Huy Quan win an Oscar for?
Ke Huy Quan won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Waymond Wang in 2022’s Everything Everywhere All At Once.
From the producers of Nobody and Violent Night, Universal Pictures’ Love Hurts premieres in theaters everywhere beginning Friday, February 7. Grab your tickets here!
