Thuy Trang

Thuy Trang (Vietnamese: Thùy Trang, December 14, 1973 - September 3, 2001) was a Vietnamese American actress.

Through the talent scout she got small roles in a couple of TV commercials/advertisements before getting her first major role in 1993 when she landed the role of Trini Kwan, the Yellow Ranger, on the original cast of the TV series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The character was written around Thuy herself - an honorable, caring young lady who adored her friends and family.

Trang was on the show for about one and a half seasons. She left the show along with Austin St. John and Walter Emanuel Jones (it is rumored they left because of pay reasons), with whom she became very good friends, and was replaced by Karan Ashley. She went on to play Kali, one of the lead villains in the 1996 movie The Crow: City of Angels.

Earlier the same year, she also appeared in Spy Hard as a manicurist. However, she was incorrectly credited as a masseuse, her credit being somehow switched with Tara Leon who played a masseuse in the same short scene.

She was set to appear in Cyberstrike, which never entered production. Trang also appeared in a video documentary called the The Encyclopedia of Martial Arts in 1995 as an interviewee.

Thuy Trang Death

Trang died at the age of 27 in a car accident on September 3, 2001 near San Francisco, California. She and former actress/model Angela Rockwood-Nguyen, to whom Trang was to be a bridesmaid later that year, were passengers in a car traveling on Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles. They were returning from visiting Angela's planned maid of honor when the driver (another of Angela's bridesmaids) of the vehicle she was riding in lost control. The car swerved violently across the road before hitting the roadside rock face and flipping several times before hitting the safety rail and plunging over the bank.

Rockwood-Nguyen, who has claimed both that she was and was not wearing a seat belt in different interviews, survived despite being thrown out of the vehicle through a window before its final impact; as a result, however, she is now quadriplegic. Trang, who was believed not to have worn a seat belt, died from the injuries she sustained. The driver did not suffer any lasting injuries but it has not been confirmed whether she was wearing a seatbelt or not.

The episode "Circuit Unsure" of Power Rangers: Time Force was dedicated to her memory. Trang was cremated a week later on September 10, 2001; her ashes are interred at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.