Creator

Haing S. Ngor

ហាំង សំណាង ង៉ោ

Cambodian physician, actor and memoirist whose autobiography recounts his survival of the Khmer Rouge period.

Haing S. Ngor (ហាំង សំណាង ង៉ោ) was a Cambodian physician, actor and activist who won an Academy Award for playing Dith Pran in The Killing Fields.[1][2] Also known as Haing Somnang Ngor, he survived the Khmer Rouge years, settled in Los Angeles in 1980 and gave much of his income and time to Cambodian refugees and relief.[1][3][4]

Medical career

Ngor trained as an obstetrician and gynecologist and practiced in Phnom Penh.[1][4] He worked at the government military hospital and in private practice, and he served as a medical officer and surgeon in the Cambodian Army.[5][2][6]

Under the Khmer Rouge

In April 1975 the Khmer Rouge ordered everyone out of Phnom Penh, and Ngor was forced to leave the city. He later said he left a patient on the operating table.[5][3] The regime targeted educated people, including doctors, for execution. Ngor hid his education and his medical skills, threw away his glasses and passed himself off as an uneducated taxi driver.[3][6] He was sent to work in the countryside, first on a rice farm and then in a forced labor camp.[4][1]

Ngor was imprisoned three times. He was caught gathering wild roots to add to his ration of rice gruel, and he was tortured after being accused of being a doctor, but he never admitted his profession.[5][6][2] He nearly died of starvation.[6] He later wrote that he had seen women tortured and killed in prison, and that he had to stay silent while Khmer Rouge medics gave a young patient a fatal injection by mistake.[3] Ngor credited his survival to karma.[7]

Refugee years

After the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979, Ngor crossed between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese lines into Thailand and reached a Red Cross refugee camp.[1][8] He worked as a doctor in the camps, including Khao-I-Dang, and at voluntary relief clinics on the Thai side of the border.[5][1] There he met the freelance journalist Roger Warner, who later wrote his autobiography with him.[7]

He was admitted to the United States in 1980 and settled in Los Angeles. He could not use his Cambodian medical license there.[6][2] He took a job as a security guard and then became a counselor at the Chinatown Service Center, a refugee resettlement agency, where he earned $400 a month. He helped newly arrived Southeast Asians find jobs and housing and explained welfare benefits to them.[6][3][8] The work focused on health and medical services for refugees.[3]

Acting career

Ngor had no acting experience when the casting director Pat Golden noticed him at a Cambodian wedding and chose him to play Dith Pran in The Killing Fields (1984).[2][1] The film is based on the story of Dith Pran, the Cambodian photojournalist and interpreter for The New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, and on Schanberg's memoirs.[1][3] Dith Pran's experiences mirrored Ngor's own, and at times scenes during filming set off his own post-traumatic stress.[2] He said he hoped the film would make the world aware of what had happened in Cambodia.[8]

At the Academy Awards in 1985 he won Best Supporting Actor. He was the first actor of Asian descent to win the award, and the second nonprofessional actor to win an acting Oscar, after Harold Russell in 1947.[1][4][2] Through the awards season he kept his counseling job, taking three weeks off to promote the film in Europe.[8] He said he had never gone to acting school and that acting was a gift from the Buddha and his parents.[8]

Ngor went on to guest roles in television and to other films, among them Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth (1993).[2][3] His last film, Hit Me, was released in 1996, after his death.[4][6]

Humanitarian work

After his Oscar, Ngor left the Chinatown Service Center to draw attention to the plight of Cambodian refugees. By 1988 he spent almost two-thirds of his time raising money for Cambodian relief, and his stated goal was a hospital at the Khao-I-Dang camp on the Thai border.[5] He gave most of his royalties from The Killing Fields, his earnings from The Iron Triangle and more than $150,000 in lecture fees to the Cambodian cause, and he pledged the profits of his autobiography as well.[5][3] He lectured widely and took part in the campaign to bring those responsible for the killings in Cambodia to justice. He also worked with human rights groups to improve conditions in the camps.[1][9]

Ngor helped found two refugee organizations: Aid for Displaced Persons, based in Brussels, and Enfants d'Angkor (Children of Angkor), based in Paris.[3][6] He helped start and sustain relief funds for flood victims and for hospital supplies.[3] He founded the Haing S. Ngor Foundation in 1991 and funded many projects in Cambodia. The Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation dates its start to the early 1990s, and it was incorporated in 1997. It continues his work with refugees in the United States and abroad.[2][6] His projects included building an elementary school, starting small businesses and running a small sawmill that gave jobs and income to local families.[6][4] In his last years he spent much of his time in Cambodia and was active in the Cambodian community of Long Beach, California.[3]

Autobiography

Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey, written with Roger Warner and published by Macmillan, first appeared in 1987. It was later republished as Survival in the Killing Fields.[1][7] The book tells of Cambodian life under the Khmer Rouge and the destruction of the country's Buddhist religion and culture, and it covers Cambodia's history and politics as well as his own life.[5][7] Ngor said he wrote it so that Americans would know the full truth about the killing fields. By February 1988 it was in its third printing, and Warner Bros. had optioned it for a television movie.[5]

Death

On February 25, 1996, Ngor was shot and killed outside his home in Chinatown, Los Angeles, during a robbery.[1][2] Police found that street gang members had killed him while robbing him for drug money, not because of his activism. Three gang members were arrested and convicted.[6] Oliver Stone remembered him as "a man of great strength and courage."[3]

Several documentaries have been made about Ngor, including A Man Without a Country, Beyond the Killing Fields and The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor (2015).[6]

Recognition

For The Killing Fields:

  • Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (1985)[1]
  • Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture (1985)[1]
  • BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role[4]
  • Several critics' awards[1]

Works


Film and television appearances:[1][3]

  • The Killing Fields (1984)
  • Hotel (1986)
  • Ba er san pao zhan (1986)
  • Dung fong tuk ying (1987)
  • CBS Summer Playhouse (1987)
  • Miami Vice (1987)
  • The Iron Triangle (1989)
  • China Beach (1989)
  • Highway to Heaven (1989)
  • Vietnam War Story: The Last Days (1989)
  • Vietnam, Texas (1990)
  • Ambition (1991)
  • The Commish (1992)
  • Heaven & Earth (1993)
  • My Life (1993)
  • Fortunes of War (1994)
  • The Dragon Gate (1994)
  • Vanishing Son (1995)
  • Hit Me (1996)

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Haing S. Ngor
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Los Angeles Public Library, Spotlight On Actor and Activist Haing Somnang Ngor (December 27, 2022)
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 Los Angeles Times, Cambodian Star of 'Killing Fields' Shot to Death in L.A. (February 27, 1996)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Haing S. Ngor, Wikipedia
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 Los Angeles Times, The Many Lives of Haing S. Ngor: Doctor/Actor Turns Author (February 15, 1988)
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 EBSCO Research Starters, Haing S. Ngor (October 1, 2024)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Los Angeles Times, The Performance of His Life: Haing Ngor, A Cambodian Odyssey, review (January 31, 1988)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 RogerEbert.com, The day Haing S. Ngor won the Oscar
  9. ↑ IMDb, Haing S. Ngor
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:39.