442: The Man Who Made It From the Killing Fields to the Oscars

In its 92-year history, only one performer of Asian descent has ever won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor: Haing S. Ngor (1940-96).

Born in Cambodia, Ngor was an obstetrician and gynecologist by trade but hid this when the Khmer Rouge came to power as professionals and the educated were killed under the regime. When the Khmer Rouge collapsed in 1979, Ngor escaped to Thailand. There, he worked as a doctor in a refugee camp.

Ngor came to the United States in 1980 and four years later, made his cinematic debut portraying Cambodian journalist Dith Pran in The Killing Fields. This was Ngor’s first-ever acting role, which earned him the Oscar in 1985. He is still one of only two amateur actors and the second Asian actor overall to win an Oscar.

During his acceptance speech, Ngor described his win as “unbelievable, but so is [his] entire life,” thanking everyone from the man he portrayed, Pran, and his co-star Sam Waterston, to the “casting lady” who found him and Warner Brothers for helping him tell the world what happened in his home country of Cambodia.

Following his win, Ngor continued acting, appearing in fact-based films about Southeast Asian conflicts. But as The Killing Fields was a wake-up call for the rest of the world to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, he used his celebrity to bring attention to the genocide that caused almost two million deaths in Cambodia. In 1988, he released a memoir, Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey (later released as Survival in the Killing Fields), chronicling his life and his time in the Khmer Rouge labor camps.

Ngor “was an early and staunch advocate for a Khmer Rouge tribunal,” according to the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), publicly calling out world governments for ignoring the plight of his fellow Cambodians. He also opened an orphanage in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, built a schoolhouse in his home village and delivered medical and humanitarian supplies to refugee camps.

Ngor died in February 1996, shot in an alleyway in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Law enforcement concluded it was gang violence, a robbery gone bad. But for some, things didn’t add up right. There are those who believe Ngor was murdered for his outspokenness against Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge but even following an international investigation, nothing could be proven.