Hiep Thi Le

About Hiep Thi Le

At the age of eight in 1979, the Vietnam-born actress and her seven
year-old sister were separated from their parents and left their
village in central Vietnam as boat people. Their father and older
brother had made the trip the year before and their mother stayed
behind with her other children. The sisters lived in refugee camps in
Hong Kong for three months where they were reunited with their father,
then emigrated to California the United States before reuniting with
her five other siblings. Her mother finally reunited with the family
four years later.Hiep was a premed student at U.C. Davis majoring in physiology when she
came to the open casting call with one of her sisters for the
Oliver Stone film
Heaven & Earth (1993) being held
at San Jose State University because several of her friends were doing
it for fun. She was one of 16,000 Vietnamese-Americans seen by casting
scouts for the film and was the one of the thousands who got the
starring role of Le Ly Hayslip. Despite
having no acting experience, she had a half-dozen callbacks before she
was finally chosen to play the role of Lely Heyslip between ages of 13
to 38.Since that time, she has acted in several films and has graduated from
college. She is the owner and operator of the China Beach Vietnamese
Bistro in Venice, California....

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