Haing S. Ngor

Haing Somnang Ngor was born on March 22, 1940 in the small village of Samrong Yong, then part of French Indochina, to a Khmer mother and a father of Chinese descent. Trained as a gynecologist and obstetrician, he practiced medicine in Phnom Penh until the Khmer Rouge seized the city in 1975, forcing him to conceal his education, glasses, and professional identity in order to survive the regime's brutal persecution of intellectuals. During the forced evacuations he and his wife Chang My‑Huoy were sent to a labor camp where she died in 1978 while giving birth to a child they could not save, illustrating the extreme conditions that Ngor endured, including subsisting on beetles, termites, and scorpions. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 Ngor escaped to a Red Cross refugee camp in Thailand, where he served again as a physician, and the following year he resettled in Los Angeles, United States, eventually becoming a naturalized citizen in 1986. Despite having no prior acting experience, he was cast as Dith Pran in the 1984 Academy‑Award‑winning film The Killing Fields, a role that earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, making him the first Asian‑descent performer to receive that honor and one of only two amateur actors ever to win an Oscar. Ngor used his newfound platform to share the horrors of Cambodia, publishing his autobiography Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey in 1987 and establishing the Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation to fund schools, a sawmill, and other humanitarian projects for his native country. He continued to act in films such as Eastern Condors (1987), Heaven & Earth (1993), and television series including China Beach and Miami Vice, while also serving as a Buddhist advocate for Cambodian refugees. Tragically, on February 25, 1996 Ngor was fatally shot outside his Los Angeles home in a robbery that also involved a locket containing his late wife’s photo; his murder sparked speculation about political motives, yet the perpetrators were ultimately convicted. Ngor’s legacy endures through his Oscar‑winning performance, his humanitarian work, and the countless individuals he inspired to remember and honor Cambodia’s painful history.