Haing S. Ngor

At 55 years old, Haing S. Ngor has this physical status:

Haing Somnang Ngor (W) Hànrùn (W) Hànrón, 1940-born, a Cambodian American gynecologist, obstetrician, comedian, and author.

He is best remembered for his 1985 appearance in The Killing Fields (1984), in which he portrayed Cambodian journalist and refugees Dith Pran.Ngor is the only Asian actor to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He spent three terms in Cambodian jail camps, using his medical expertise to keep himself alive by eating beetles, termites, and scorpions; he then crawled between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese lines to safety in a Red Cross refugee camp.

Khmer's mother was Khmer and his father, a Teochew descendant, was of Chinese Teochew descent.

Mr. Ho opposite Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman are the only two non-professional actors to win an Academy Award in an acting category.

Life under the Khmer Rouge

Born in Samrong Young (in 1940, French Indochina), Bati district, now Takeo province, Cambodia, Ngor trained as a surgeon and gynecologist. In 1975, Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge took power of the nation and declared it Democratic Kampuchea, he was working in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. He was compelled to conceal his education, surgical expertise, and even the fact that he wore glasses to escape the new regime's growing hostility against intellectuals and professionals. He and the majority of Phnom Penh's two million residents were banned from the town's "Year Zero" social experiment and detained in a concentration camp with his wife, My-Huoy, who died giving birth to their first child. Despite being a gynecologist, he was unable to care for his wife, who needed a Caesarean section, because he would have been exposed, and both he and his wife (as well as the child) would have been killed. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Ngor worked as a doctor in a Thai refugee camp and then moved with his niece to the United States on August 30, 1980. Ngor was unable to return to his medical practice in America, and he did not remarry.

He wrote Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey in 1988, describing his time in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Roger Warner, Ngor's co-author, adds an epilogue in the second edition of Survivor in the Killing Fields, chronicling Ngor's life after winning the Academy Award.

In 1997, Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation was established to help raise funds for Cambodian relief. Ngor, a local boy, built an elementary school and operated a small sawmill that provided jobs and an income to local families as part of his humanitarian efforts. Sophia Ngor Demetri, Ngor's niece and nephew who testified at his murder convictions and with whom he arrived in the United States, is the current president of the Foundation.

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Acting career

Despite having no acting experience, Ngor was cast in The Killing Fields (1984), becoming the first (and only) Asian to win Best Supporting Actor in his debut role, becoming the second Asian actor to win an Oscar after Harold Russell. Ngor was not initially keen on the role of Dith Pran, but interviews with the filmmakers changed his mind, recalling that he promised his late wife to tell Cambodia's story to the world. "I wanted to tell the world how deep starvation is in Cambodia, how many people die under the communist regime," he said in People magazine. My heart is content. "I have done something amazing."

Ngor went on to appear in a variety of onscreen films, including the Vanishing Son miniseries and Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth (1993). He appeared in the Hong Kong film Eastern Condors (1987), which was directed by and starring Sammo Hung.

Ngor appeared in a supporting role in the 1989 Vietnam War tragedy The Iron Triangle (episodes "How to Stay Alive in Vietnam 1 & 2") as a wounded Cambodian POW who befriends Colleen McMurphy while under her custody. In a Miami Vice episode called "The Savage / Duty and Honor," Ngor appeared.

In My Life (1993), the directorial debut of Academy Award-winning screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin's debut in My Life (1993), follows next to The Killing Fields, Ngor's most prominent feature film role. Since Bob Jones (Michael Keaton) and his partner Gail (Nicole Kidman) are diagnosed with terminal cancer months before his first child, the Ngor portrayed a spiritual healer, Mr. Ho.

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