Ke Huy Quan made a tearful speech accepting the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” near the beginning of Sunday night’s Oscar broadcast.
“For all of the actors out there, please keep your dreams alive,” Quan said.
Fayetteville native Brian Tyree Henry, who was among the four other actors nominated in the category, can take that message to heart.
Henry, who may be best known for his role in the FX comedy-drama series “Atlanta,” was nominated for his role in the 2022 film “Causeway.”
Other contenders in the category were Brendan Gleeson, for “The Banshees of Inisherin”; Judd Hirsch, for “The Fabelmans”; and Barry Keoghan, for “The Banshees of Inisherin.”
Henry graduated in 2000 from E.E. Smith High School, where he was the Golden Bulls mascot.
Henry, 41, is a versatile actor whose career spans film, television and theater.
In the psychological drama “Causeway,” actress Jennifer Lawrence stars as a soldier struggling to adjust when she returns home to New Orleans on the heels of a traumatic brain injury after an IED explosion during her tour in Afghanistan. She meets a local mechanic played by Henry, and the two forge an unexpected bond.
His character also has suffered physical and mental trauma after his nephew is killed in a vehicle accident on the 24-mile-long Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana.
Henry has also gained notice for his performances in television’s “Boardwalk Empire” and “How to Get Away With Murder” as well as the films “Bullet Train” and “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
Rolling Stone magazine, in a June 19, 2021, story, reported that Henry started acting in elementary school in Fayetteville. He is the youngest of five children of a middle-school teacher and a Vietnam veteran.
Henry grew up in the Tokay neighborhood. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta as a business major but turned to acting in the early 2000s. Henry received his master’s degree from the Yale University School of Drama, online accounts say.
