Ke Huy Quan is recalling his reaction to learning as a child that his first residual check for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was $100,000.
The Oscar winner opened up about the life-changing moment in his new memoir Never Say Die, which hit bookstands on Tuesday. Quan was only 12 years old when he booked his first major role as Short Round in Steven Spielberg‘s 1984 film, so he didn’t realize he would receive residuals for the film in addition to his base pay for Temple of Doom.
“One afternoon, I walked into the kitchen and found my parents standing together at the table,” Quan wrote in the memoir, via Entertainment Weekly. “Mom was holding an envelope with my name printed across it. Dad had the papers that had been inside.”
The Everything Everywhere All at Once star continued, “They were both smiling, the kind of smile that comes from surprise and disbelief mixed together. They handed everything to me. It was a check from Lucasfilm. It was for almost $100,000, an amount that didn’t make any sense to me.”
Quan said he “didn’t understand how more money could suddenly appear” after already being compensated for his work on the follow-up to 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Once he wrapped his head around it, the Loki actor described the residuals clause as “a quiet gesture from Steven and George [Lucas].”
“Back then, almost no actors got a piece of a movie’s profits,” he explained in Never Say Die. “Even today, only the biggest stars do. That a kid like me, making his first film, would be included in something like that was unheard of. And Temple of Doom wasn’t some small movie no one was expected to see. It was the sequel to a massive hit, a movie everyone knew would make a lot of money. That made their gesture even more generous.”
The Goonies actor added that the “small share was life-changing for my family.”
Years later, Quan never forgot the impact Spielberg had on his career, giving him his start so young. While accepting the award for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in any motion picture during the 2023 Golden Globes for Everything Everywhere All at Once, he made sure to thank Spielberg.
“As I grew older, I started to wonder if that was it, if that was just luck,” Quan added at the time. “For so many years, I was afraid I had nothing more to offer. No matter what I did, I would never surpass what I achieved as a kid.”