Hiep Thi Le

Hiep Thi Le (Vietnamese: Lê Thị Hiệp; February 18, 1971 – December 19, 2017) was an American actress. She is known for her portrayal of Le Ly in Oliver Stone's war drama film Heaven & Earth (1993).

Early life

Le was born on February 18, 1971, in Da Nang, South Vietnam. In 1978, her father became a refugee, leaving Vietnam for Hong Kong. When Le was nine years old, her mother arranged for her and her younger sister to join their father.

We were told by my mom that we had to go look for Dad, and that he had gone to someplace called 'America', which we interpreted was the city across the river, since it had lights.

Along with approximately 60 other refugees, the girls hid in a secret compartment behind a galley pantry on a fishing boat sailing to Hong Kong to reunite with their father.

Sometime during the night, just as we arrived at a Vietnamese checkpoint, my sister woke up and started screaming for our momma ... "Everyone thought we were going to die", she says. That night, the boat captain grabbed her screaming 7-year-old sister and put a knife to her throat. Le witnessed it and it scarred her for life. "Tears rolled down her face, but there was no more crying ... I thought her eyes were going to fall out of their sockets", she says. Her sister survived, and when they both reached port, they stayed in a Hong Kong refugee camp. They eventually reunited with her father in Hong Kong. Le's entire family – her parents and five children – were eventually reunited in Northern California.

Eventually, Le lived in Oakland, California as a child. There her mother worked at a French-Vietnamese restaurant. She graduated from Oakland High School. She attended the University of California, Davis with a major in physiology.