Ke Huy Quan won every major supporting actor award for the 2022 film cycle except the BAFTA. He was the first Asian man to win an individual category at the SAG Awards. He was only the second Asian actor to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, after Haing S. Ngor, who had won in 1985 for *The Killing Fields* — the same year that *The Goonies* had introduced twelve-year-old Ke Huy Quan as Data to American audiences.
## The Speech
When his name was called at the 95th Academy Awards ceremony, Quan stood up and embraced Michelle Yeoh, who was seated nearby, before making his way to the stage. He hugged Jamie Lee Curtis. He kissed the Oscar — more than once, by multiple accounts.
He was emotional from the moment he reached the microphone. What he said, in paraphrase and in summary, was the following:
He thanked the Academy. He told his mother, who was 84 years old and watching from home, that he had just won an Oscar. His journey, he told the audience, had started on a boat. He had spent a year in a refugee camp. And he had ended up here, on Hollywood’s biggest stage. He called it the American Dream.
He thanked his wife, Echo, who had encouraged him and supported him for twenty years — including the years when he had almost given up. He thanked his *Goonies* co-star Jeff Cohen, who had become an entertainment lawyer and had negotiated his contract for *Everything Everywhere All at Once*. He thanked his brother David. He thanked A24, the Daniels, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and the full cast and crew of the film.