'As an actress who came from a warzone, I went through so much,' admits HBO star Kieu Chinh

Kieu Chinh is currently starring in the new HBO and A24 drama The Sympathizer, a show she’s admitted brought back a lot of memories of the Vietnam War.

The actress found stardom in her native South Vietnam before fleeing to Canada on the last flight out of Vietnam during the fall of Saigon in 1975. She’s now part of a star-studded cast, including Robert Downey Jr and Sandra Oh, who are bringing tales from the war to the silver screen.

The Sympathizer, which has just launched exclusively on Sky Atlantic, tells the story of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy known as The Captain. Speaking about the new show, Chinh told The Mirror: “My background, I came from Vietnam. So this is just a story but based on the Vietnam war stories.”

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Kieu Chinh and Robert Downey Jr

She added: “There are many scenes that bring back my memories. Especially the scene of the last day of Saigon where the evacuation, the huge evacuation at the airport, we shot that in Thailand at night-time. All night, I feel my heart was beating and I’m not only acting as an actress but it’s like I relived my own experiences.

“What happened to me in my own life is exactly what I’m playing now, my character, in Sympathizer.” When Chinh escaped from Saigon, she became a refugee and ended up in Canada before actress Tippi Hedren sponsored her to move to the US.

Chinh spoke to us about her experience and said: “I had left Saigon, Vietnam, and I became a refugee. I left Saigon with nothing but clothes on my back and I came to America under the sponsorship of actress Tippi Hedren.”

Kieu Chinh

Kieu Chinh

Chinh also praised the production team for casting a lot of Vietnamese actors. “Look at old time like in the movie The King and I, the Asian character is played by Yul Brynner.

“He’s supposed to be an Asian character! And therefore, I am very happy that HBO and A24 have chosen a Vietnamese novel – The Sympathizer by Pulitzer winner author Viet Thanh Nguyen – and they cast Vietnamese to play Vietnamese,” the actress told us.

Sandra Oh, Hoa Xuande and Kieu Chinh

Away from The Sympathizer, Chinh has also starred in the likes of The Joy Luck Club and M*A*S*H. She also co-founded the Vietnam Children’s Fund along with the late Lewis Puller Jr and Terry Anderson.

Since it was founded in 1993, VCF has built 52 schools in Vietnam to provide safe education for students. Chinh told us more about VCF: “Our main goal is to build schools in the most damaged villages during the wartime. Building schools for elementary children that don’t have school to go to.

“I believe education is the most important for the future.” The goal of VCF is to build enough schools for 57,000 students, to match the number of names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.

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