Mortal Kombat Star Ana Thu Nguyen: For Kids of Migrants Who’ve Ever Talked Themselves Out of Their Own Dreams

If you grew up translating for your parents, working in the family business and quietly editing your dreams down to something “sensible,” this episode is for you. Actor Ana Thu Nguyen and her mum, Uyen, talk about going from a crowded boat and 17‑hour bakery days to a life where survival isn’t the only goal and why Ana finally stopped treating acting as a selfish fantasy and started seeing it as the point. This isn’t a guilt trip; it’s loud, joyful permission for anyone who’s ever thought, “That dream’s not for someone like me,” to want more anyway.

In this episode of Love Stories Tiffany Dunk Deputy Editor of The Australian Women's Weekly, we uncover what it feels like to have the wildest dreams, the one you’re certain is “not for someone like you”is exactly the life you’re allowed to want? In this episode, actor Ana Thu Nguyen sits down with her mum, Uyen, to talk with Tiffany about how a family journey that began on a crowded boat and in an Indonesian refugee camp slowly, quietly turned into something else: a home built on support, softness and the loud joy of saying yes to a creative life.

Ana grew up as the eldest daughter in a Vietnamese‑Australian family translating for her parents, helping in the bakery, watching them work 17hour days and convincing herself that law or a “proper job” was the only way to honour their sacrifice. Her escapism was always story: stacks of library books, school plays, and the moment she watched a production of Macbeth and literally saw herself on stage, years before Hollywood came calling

Together, Ana and Uyen trace the love story underneath the hustle: the grandfather‑figure who opened his Sydney home to them, the weekends in Cabramatta keeping culture alive, the bakery that paid the bills and raised two daughters, and the small gestures of care a hug, a shared coffee, a home cooked meal that told Ana she was loved long before she was “successful.” And then they talk about the pivot: the moment Ana decided that choosing acting wasn’t a betrayal of her parents’ struggle but the purest use of it.

This isn’t a trauma story; it’s a permission story. It’s for anyone raised on hard work and low expectations who now finds themselves pulled towards a life that looks nothing like what their family imagined and is scared of wanting it anyway

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Moments you’ll hear:

• Ana explaining the mental math of the eldest daughter: if she chose acting over law, she was sure she’d be “dishonouring” her parents and failing at the one job she’d given herself to pay them back.

• Uyen casually mentioning 17‑hour days in the bakery and “half a day off at Christmas” 

• The moment in a high‑school production of Macbeth when she looked at the stage and, in her words, “left her body” because she suddenly saw herself up there, not just as an audience member but as a possibility.

• How her mum’s quiet mantra “I can do this for my family, I can do this for my children” became the blueprint for Ana’s own leap into acting: if she loved it this much, surely she could do it too.

• A love language check‑in that reveals both mother and daughter are “touch people,” more interested in hugs and time together than gifts, even as the world tries to monetise every feeling via holidays and retail moments.

• The shift from survival to support: Ana realising that her parents hadn’t worked this hard so she could stay small and sensible forever; they’d worked this hard so she could stand in a life that fit her, even if it scared all of them a little.

Thank you for listening ❤️ 

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