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THE GOONIES HAS many life lessons to teach. Teamwork makes everyone stronger. Monsters can be beautiful on the inside. Musical instruments made of human bones are best avoided. But perhaps most key is this one: a path to ‘rich stuff’ can be stumbled upon when you least expect it.
And so it has proven for Ke Huy Quan, best known as that movie’s gadget-loving Data, and as Indy’s high-spirited sidekick Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. After striking it massive at the tender age of 12, plucked out of obscurity to star in two of the biggest blockbusters of the 1980s, he decided he was happy stepping away from the limelight, living a quiet life in Los Angeles. Until recently, when a screenplay arrived at his door, for an odd and highly ambitious science-fiction drama titled Everything Everywhere All At Once, written by filmmaking duo the Daniels (Swiss Army Man). “I started reading it at 1am,” remembers Quan, “and I didn’t finish until 5am. I laughed so hard and so long, I woke up my wife. And by the time she came out, I had tears running down my cheeks. She said, ‘Are you okay?’ I said, ‘I love this script. And I think this role is written for me.’”
Not many careers start with Indiana Jones teaching you to swim. And Quan’s memories of that time are as happy as you’d expect. “Being on a set with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, for an actor, is like you’ve died and gone to heaven, basically,” he says. He particularly bonded with Ford, who one day hid a rock in his mouth, then dropped it out to elicit real on-camera laughter from his co-star. And despite his sudden fame, Quan never went off the rails: “I grew up in a very strict, traditional-Chinese-value family. I remember going home after a premiere where thousands of people were cheering for me, and you know what? My family didn’t care.”