The Big Picture

  • Haing S. Ngor's debut film performance in The Killing Fields won him an Academy Award and made him the first Asian-American to win in the category.
  • Ngor survived the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, enduring torture and starvation. He later fled to the United States and became a physician and actor.
  • Ngor's murder in 1996 was initially deemed a botched robbery, but there are suspicions that powerful and shadowy forces, possibly tied to the Khmer Rouge, were involved.