Hong Chau is an American actress. She has received several award nominations for her film roles as Ngoc Lan Tran in Downsizing and as Liz, a nurse, in The Whale, including a nomination 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 sponsored Chau and her family to move to the United States.