Hiep Thi Le
| Hiep Thi Le | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 30, 1969 Da Nang, Vietnam |
| Occupation | actress |
Hiep Thi Le (Vietnamese: Lê Thị Hiệp; born November 30, 1969 in Da Nang, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese-American actress, known for her role in Heaven & Earth (1993).
Le was born on November 30, 1969 in Da Nang, Vietnam. In 1978, her father became a refugee who defected from Vietnam to Hong Kong. A year later when Le was 8 years old, she and her younger sister, along with approximately 60 other refugees, got themselves hidden in a secret compartment behind a galley pantry on a fishing boat sailing to Hong Kong to reunite with their father. "Sometime during the night, just as we arrived at a Vietnamese checkpoint, my sister woke up and started screaming for our momma," Le says. "Everyone thought we were going to die." That night, a fishing boat captain grabbed her screaming 7-year-old sister and put a knife to her throat. Le witnessed it and it scarred her for life. "Tears rolled down her face, but there was no more crying," says Le. "I thought her eyes were going to fall out of their sockets." Her sister survived, and when they both reached port, they stayed in a Hong Kong refugee camp. They eventually reunited with her father in Hong Kong. Le's entire family—her parents and five children—were eventually reunited in Northern California.
Eventually, Le moved to Oakland, California as a child, where her mother worked at a French-Vietnameserestaurant. Le graduated from Oakland High School. She attended the University of California, Davis with a major in physiology. Le originally had plans to graduate in June 1993 and pursue a career in science. During her tenure as a college student, she went to an open casting call in Northern California "because all my friends were doing it for fun" and ended up being cast in the leading role of Oliver Stone's third film set amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War, Heaven & Earth (1993).
...
Wikipedia