Vietnamese-American actress Hiep Thi Le, the breakout star of Oliver Stone’s 1993 war drama Heaven & Earth, recently passed away.
Variety reports that Le died in Los Angeles on Tuesday due to complications from stomach cancer.
Heaven & Earth was the final film in Stone’s Vietnam War trilogy – after Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. The movie is based on the memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip. It traces the journey through hardship and abuse of a woman born in rural Vietnam during the war who later fled to America.
Hiep Thi Le was a complete newcomer before appearing in Heaven & Earth. She had never been in a film and only attended an open casting call at her friends’ urging.
Stone shared with film critic Robert Ebert how he discovered Le: "[We] searched in six or seven American cities, and in Hong Kong and Bangkok. More than 16,000 Vietnamese came in to read for 30 different roles. Our people saw her, put her on video, thought she was electric, and flew her down to Los Angeles ... didn't send her to any acting school. I didn't feel that it was necessary; she was a natural.”
Le’s performance as the confident motorbike-driving Le Ly was praised by many critics. The New York Times complimented her acting chops: “As played with impressive confidence by Hiep Thi Le, a Vietnamese-born California college student making her film debut, Le Ly certainly does not lack energy. She moves through the film with a scrappy vigor that suits her story.”
Le Ly (Hiep Thi Le) with Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones) in Heaven & Earth. Video via YouTube user Quan Dinh.
The actress was born in Da Nang in 1971. At the age of nine, she left for Hong Kong on a fishing boat with 60 other refugees. She was forced to hide with her sister in a secret compartment behind the galley pantry.
Eventually she settled with her family in Oakland, California. She was majoring in psychology at the University of California at Davis when she was cast in Heaven & Earth. She told The Los Angeles Times in 1993 that her salary from the movie went to student loans and bills for her family, who lived in poverty at the time.
Following Heaven & Earth, Le had roles in Cruel Intentions and Green Dragon as well as various television programs. In 2016, she reprised her role as Mai-Lee in the pilot for a television remake of Cruel Intentions, but the series was not picked up.
Aside from a career in film, Le also dabbled in the restaurant industry. She was the chef at China Beach Bistro in Venice, California and then chef and owner of Le Cellier, a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant in Marina Del Rey in the same state. In 2014, she competed on the Food Network show Chopped.
Le is survived by her husband, two children, six siblings and her parents, who now live in Los Angeles.
[Top photo via Variety]
