Hong Chau (born June 25, 1979) is an American actress. She has received several award nominations for her film roles as Ngoc Lan Tran in Downsizing (2017) and as Liz, a nurse, in The Whale (2022), including one for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the latter.

Chau was born to Vietnamese parents who lived in a refugee camp in Thailand after fleeing Vietnam in the late 1970s. A Vietnamese Catholic church in New Orleans, Louisiana sponsored Chau and her family to move to the United States. She grew up in New Orleans and majored in film studies at Boston University College of Communication before pursuing an acting career. She appeared in the TV series Treme (2010–2013) and the film Inherent Vice (2014). She went on to have supporting roles in the HBO limited series Watchmen (2019) and the Prime Video series Homecoming (2018–2020). Chau has also played leading roles in the 2019 films Driveways and American Woman, and further supporting roles in the 2022 film The Menu and the 2023 Netflix series The Night Agent.

Before Hong Chau was born, her parents and her two brothers lived in Vietnam.In 1979, the family was among the Vietnamese boat people who fled their country, and Chau's mother was six months pregnant with her.  During their escape, Chau's father was shot and nearly bled to death.  Chau was born in a refugee camp in Thailand on June 25 that year.  A Vietnamese Catholic church in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States arranged for a local Vietnamese family to sponsor her family. Chau grew up speaking Vietnamese as her first language, and later learned English in school.  Her family lived in government housing and used subsidized lunch programs. 

Chau was raised in New Orleans East and attended Eleanor McMain Secondary School, Benjamin Franklin High School, and then Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts; the first two are in New Orleans and the latter, from which Chau graduated, is in Natchitoches, Louisiana.  Her parents worked as dishwashers then ran a convenience store working to ensure that the children could attend college.  Chau said her parents, who speak English with heavy Vietnamese accents, were shunned as Asian migrants. She said, "My whole life, I've always felt like I was the more acceptable of my parents, and they were always the people who had to stay in the background, or hide in the broom closet." 

Receiving Pell Grants  Chau attended Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts,[6] where she initially studied creative writing. She changed her major to film studies when her parents requested that she study something more practical. She explored acting to challenge her introversion;  she acted in other students' short films and was encouraged to pursue acting.  She graduated from Boston University College of Communication with her film-studies major in 2001.  After college, Chau got a job with PBS and anticipated a career in documentaries.[10] Chau started taking public speaking classes to overcome being introverted, which led to improv classes. When Chau met a sitcom TV director, he encouraged her to move to Los Angeles and to get in contact with him. Chau decided to move to LA and began seeking acting opportunities there 

As of May 2020, she has a dog, a Rottweiler-Australian Shepherd mix. In November of the same year, Chau gave birth to a daughter. 

2006–2017: Early work and breakthrough with Downsizing

Chau began acting in film and TV in 2006. In the early 2010s, she had guest roles on the CBS TV series NCIS and How I Met Your Mother.  One of her first major roles was in the HBO series Treme (2010–2013), which was set in New Orleans.  Her first feature film role was in the 2014 film Inherent Vice. For two years after her role, she was not able to get an audition for another film role. In 2015, she had a key role in the Off-Broadway play John,  she credited the experience for strengthening her acting. She also had a supporting role in the first season of the HBO series Big Little Lies in 2017 

Chau appeared in a supporting role as Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese political activist, in Alexander Payne's comedy-drama Downsizing (2017) Her performance was described as a standout by several reviewers.  Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers described her performance as "nothing less than an acting triumph", and took particular note of her "poignant scenes" with the film's star Matt Damon.  She was nominated for several awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.  Some commentators criticized her character as stereotypical because Chau spoke in broken English, but Chau defended her as "so multifaceted and complex and well-written". 

2018–2020: Leading roles

Following Downsizing, in 2018, Hong Chau was one of 928 new members invited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and