After an Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor in 2023, one would think Ke Huy Quan might register his own star power, but that may not necessarily be the case. Taking on the lead role in the upcoming action comedy “Love Hurts” was not a foregone conclusion for Quan, who passed on the script a number of times before agreeing to sign on. This wouldn’t have happened without an old friend helping to change his mind.
“I was at an event with Steven Spielberg and he was asking me, ‘Ke, how are you doing?’ I said, ‘Steven, I’m not doing so well.’ Because of all the love and support that I had gotten during that whole award season, I was so worried that whatever I was going to do next, I would disappoint,” Quan said in a recent interview with Empire. “So I was having trouble picking my next project. Steven was very generous. He said, ‘Ke, let’s have lunch.’ And I told him about this project and kind of pitched it to him. He said, ‘Ke, it’s great. Do it.’”
Spielberg directed a 12-year-old Quan opposite Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” They celebrated the 2023 awards season together, with Quan in the race for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and Spielberg for “The Fabelmans.”
Following Quan’s multiple wins, many were eager to work with him, including David Leitch’s 87North. The production company behind the “John Wick” franchise wanted Quan for “Love Hurts,” but at the time, Quan couldn’t see himself in the role.
“I thought it was written for somebody like Jason Statham, because I’ve been conditioned to think that when you have an action star, he needs to look like The Rock or Stallone or Schwarzenegger,” he said. “I didn’t think anybody that looks like me could star in this role. Luckily, they didn’t give up on me. They came back for a third time.”
He added later of 87North courting him, “I went in and they had these really elaborate slides with me as the main character. That’s when I started to see it a different way. ‘Oh, they’re trying to create a different kind of action hero. Not the type that we’ve seen for decades, but something new.’”
“Action hero” isn’t the only kind of character Quan would like to take on. With this new career resurgence, he’s hoping the sky’s the limit.
“I would love to play a bad guy. Like a Bond villain. Or the kind of thing Hugh Grant does in ‘Heretic,’” Quan told Empire. “I want to go out of my comfort zone and just play this diabolical, really bad guy. (Laughs) That would be a lot of fun.”
“Love Hurts” is in theaters from Universal Pictures on February 7.
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