Oscar Winner Ke Huy Quan Says He's 'Worried' That His Comeback Success 'Is Only a One-Time Thing'

Matt Winkelmeyer/FilmMagic

Ke Huy Quan is celebrating his Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actor, but he's also acutely aware that Hollywood success can come and go.

While speaking with Variety after his Oscar victory for a cover story published Wednesday, the Everything Everywhere All at Once star, 51, admitted that he still worries for the future of his acting career, even after winning one of the industry's most sought-after awards.

"Everything is still so fresh in my mind. And that's why moving forward I'm still really scared," the actor said of the decades he spent struggling to find work as an actor after initially breaking out as a child star in the 1980s.

"Even though I just won an Oscar, I'm still really fearful of what tomorrow brings," Quan told the outlet. "I had a conversation with my agent, and I said 'I'm so worried that this is only a one-time thing.' "

"I've been down this road before and I'm so afraid that history is going to repeat itself," he added. "I said 'please, whatever you do, please make sure that does not happen.' "

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Andrew Eccles for Variety

During the interview, Quan recalled a recent interaction with Cate Blanchett at an awards season event and the advice the two-time Oscar winner gave him after he confessed concerns about his career moving forward.

"And she said, 'Just go with your heart and be irresponsible: Don't worry about what other people think,' " Quan recalled of 53-year-old Blanchett's advice. " 'Choose something that you believe in, choose something that you love, and things will work out.' "

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After Quan accepted his Oscar during Sunday night's 95th Academy Awards, the actor told reporters in the press room that he was "so emotional" after he heard Ariana DeBose speak his birth name out loud as she presented the award.

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"When I started as a kid, it was my birth name, Ke Huy Quan. And I remembered when it got really tough, my manager told me that 'maybe, you know, it would be easier if you were to have an American sounding name,' and I was so desperate for a job that I would do anything," the actor told reporters backstage Sunday.

Quan, who used the names Jonathan Ke Quan and Jonathan Quan at different points earlier in his career, told reporters that when he resolved to return to acting in 2020, "the very first thing that I wanted to do was to go back to my birth given name."

"Tonight to see Ariana open that envelope and say 'Ke Huy Quan,' that was a really, really special moment for me," he added. "And then immediately I was so emotional."