Hong Chau

Hong Chau (born June 25, 1979) is an American actress. She has received several award nominations for her film roles as Ngoc Lan Tran in Downsizing (2017) and as Liz, a nurse, in The Whale (2022), including one for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the latter. Chau was born to Vietnamese parents who lived in a refugee camp in Thailand after fleeing Vietnam in the late 1970s. A Vietnamese Catholic church in New Orleans, Louisiana sponsored Chau and her family to move to the United States. She grew up in New Orleans and majored in film studies at Boston University College of Communication before pursuing an acting career. She appeared in the TV series Treme (2010–2013) and the film Inherent Vice (2014). She went on to have supporting roles in the HBO limited series Watchmen (2019) and the Prime Video series Homecoming (2018–2020). Chau has also played leading roles in the 2019 films Driveways and American Woman, and further supporting roles in the 2022 film The Menu and the 2023 Netflix series The Night Agent. Life Before Hong Chau was born, her parents and her two brothers lived in Vietnam. In 1979, the family was among the Vietnamese boat people who fled their country, and Chau's mother was six months pregnant with her. During their escape, Chau's father was shot and nearly bled to death. Chau was born in a refugee camp in Thailand on June 25 that year. A Vietnamese Catholic church in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States arranged for a local Vietnamese family to sponsor her family. Chau grew up speaking Vietnamese as her first language, and later learned English in school. Her family lived in government housing and used subsidized lunch programs. Chau was raised in New Orleans East and attended Eleanor McMain Secondary School, Benjamin Franklin High School, and then Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts; the first two are in New Orleans and the latter, from which Chau graduated, is in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Her parents worked as dishwashers then ran a convenience store, working to ensure that the children could attend college. Chau said her parents, who speak English with heavy Vietnamese accents, were shunned as Asian migrants. She said, "My whole life, I've always felt like I was the more acceptable of my parents, and they were always the people who had to stay in the background, or hide in the broom closet."