Ke Huy Quan turned down his first leading role in an action movie… until Steven Spielberg gave him a reality check.

Fresh off his Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Quan found himself staring down an opportunity he never thought possible—a lead role in Love Hurts, a full-blown action-comedy where he plays a mild-mannered realtor with a not-so-mild history as an assassin. But despite the offer, he hesitated.

“I didn’t think anybody that looks like me could star in this role,” Quan said in a recent interview with Empire. In his mind, it was a role that was meant for an action star in the vein of Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, not him. Even when the filmmakers insisted and came back three times, he wasn’t convinced.

Then, Spielberg stepped in. The two crossed paths at an event, and the legendary director—who cast Quan as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom—checked in on his former child star. “I was at an event with Steven Spielberg, and he was asking me, ‘Ke, how are you doing?’” Quan recalled. “I said, ‘Steven, I’m not doing so well.’ Because of all the love and support that I had gotten during that whole award season, I was so worried that whatever I was going to do next, I would disappoint.”

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Spielberg wasn’t having it. “Steven was very generous. He said, ‘Ke, let’s have lunch.’ And I told him about this project and kind of pitched it to him. He said, ‘Ke, it’s great. Do it.’”

That was the push Quan needed. “I went in, and they had these really elaborate slides with me as the main character. That’s when I started to see it a different way,” he said. “‘Oh, they’re trying to create a different kind of action hero. Not the type that we’ve seen for decades, but something new.’”

Now, with Love Hurts hitting U.S. cinemas on 7 February, Quan is doing exactly what Spielberg told him to do—going for it. And if Everything Everywhere All at Once proved anything, it’s that Hollywood (and audiences) are more than ready for him to take centre stage.