Hiep Thi Le

Le died on December 19, 2017 in Los Angeles from stomach cancer at the age of 46. Despite having a fairly short resume, she was acknowledged in the In Memoriam segment at the 90th Academy Awards.

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, a fishing 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.

On February 23, 2014, Le appeared on the Food Network game show Chopped, competing in the eighteenth-season episode "Beer Here!"

After a long career in the film industry, Le opened up The China Beach Bistro, a Vietnamese restaurant in Venice, Los Angeles in 2002. After 10 years at that location, Hiep closed China Beach and opened Le Cellier, a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant on the Venice and Marina del Rey border in 2012. "Although it's not easy to find out here, French-Vietnamese food dates back to the 18th century ... This unique cuisine combines the fresh herbs of Vietnamese food with the fine heritage of country French cooking", Le said. As of 2016, she owned the restaurant Le Cellier with Mark Van Gessel and Bernard Louberssac.

She appeared in Green Dragon in 2001, opposite Patrick Swayze and Forest Whitaker.

Le subsequently appeared in Bugis Street (1995, released in the United States in 1997) and co-starred in the little-seen Dead Man Can't Dance (1997). Le made an appearance in the 1999 film Bastards.

Le originally had plans to graduate in June 1993 and pursue a career in science. As a college student, she went to an open casting call in Northern California "because all my friends were doing it for fun" and ended up being cast in the leading role of Oliver Stone's third Vietnam film, Heaven & Earth (1993), set amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War.

Le was born in Da Nang, South Vietnam. In 1978, her father became a refugee who defected from Vietnam to Hong Kong. When Le was 9 years old, she fled Vietnam with her mother and sister.

Hiep Thi Le (Vietnamese: Lê Thị Hiệp; February 18, 1971 – December 19, 2017) was a Vietnamese-American actress and restaurateur. She is best known for her portrayal of Le Ly in the film Heaven & Earth (1993).