This Valentine’s Day, Adult Third Culture Kid (TCK) and Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Loki”) rockets into his first major leading man role as an unlikely hero, a seemingly mild-mannered realtor with a dark secret that he is desperate to leave behind.
Quan stars as Marvin Gable, a realtor working the Milwaukee, Wisconsin., U.S.A. suburbs. Gable receives a crimson envelope from Rose, played by Oscar winner Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story,” “Argylle”), a former partner-in-crime that he had left for dead. She’s not happy.
Now, Marvin is thrust back into a world of ruthless hitmen, filled with double-crosses and open houses turned into deadly warzones. With his brother Knuckles, played by Daniel Wu (“Tomb Raider,” “Warcraft”), a volatile crime lord, hunting him, Marvin must confront the choices that haunt him and the history he never truly buried.
Vietnamese-born, Chinese American Quan is fluent in English, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Mandarin, according to IMDB.com.
During his Oscar acceptance speech, Quan said:
My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp. And somehow, I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage.
Quan fled Vietnam with his family at the age of seven, winding up in a Hong Kong refugee camp with his dad and five siblings. His mother had escaped separately, but rejoined the family the following year after they obtained political asylum.
Settling into U.S. life was difficult for Quan, who according to the Carnegie Corporation, said:
We were refugees. Nobody wanted us.… They would call us ‘fresh off the boat.’ They would make fun of us when we were in school.
“Love Hurts” premieres in theaters on February 7. In addition to Quan, it features a diverse cast including Marshawn Lynch (“Bottoms,” “80 for Brady”), Mustafa Shakir (“Emancipation,” “Luke Cage”), Lio Tipton (“Crazy, Stupid, Love.,” “Lucy”), Rhys Darby (“Jumanji: The Next Level,” “Yes Man”), André Eriksen (“Violent Night,” “The Trip”) and Sean Astin (“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Perry Mason”).
