At the age of eight in 1979, the Vietnam-born actress and her seven year-old sister were separated from their parents and left their village in central Vietnam as boat people. Their father and older brother had made the trip the year before and their mother stayed behind with her other children. The sisters lived in refugee camps in Hong Kong for three months where they were reunited with their father, then emigrated to California the United States before reuniting with her five other siblings. Her mother finally reunited with the family four years later.Hiep was a premed student at U.C. Davis majoring in physiology when she came to the open casting call with one of her sisters for the Oliver Stone film Heaven & Earth (1993) being held at San Jose State University because several of her friends were doing it for fun. She was one of 16,000 Vietnamese-Americans seen by casting scouts for the film and was the one of the thousands who got the starring role of Le Ly Hayslip. Despite having no acting experience, she had a half-dozen callbacks before she was finally chosen to play the role of Lely Heyslip between ages of 13 to 38.Since that time, she has acted in several films and has graduated from college. She is the owner and operator of the China Beach Vietnamese Bistro in Venice, California.