Hollywood’s Nicest Dude: Keanu Reeves, Actor
Hollywood has always been known for giving us good guys and bad guys, both on-screen and in real life. Joan Crawford, Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne and Steve McQueen are just a few screen legends whose problematic behaviour out in the real world has somewhat tarnished their legacy. Luckily, there are also plenty of genuinely nice stars to counterbalance the wrong ‘uns and Keanu Reeves has topped that list for the past few decades.
On a fundamental level, Reeves simply doesn’t do Hollywood like so many of his peers. With a reported net worth of $360 million, you might think he would be a little aloof and out of touch, but the internet is awash with anecdotes about Reeves' kindness and willingness to just hang out with regular folk, such as the time in 1997 when he was spotted chilling with a homeless guy on the streets of Los Angeles.
That moment of compassion and friendliness may have stemmed from the fact that Reeves himself slept rough for a short period before his career took off and his laid-back approach to superstardom in general is perhaps an indication of his unconventional childhood and path to Hollywood's Walk of Fame.
Born of English, Chinese, Portuguese, Native Hawaiian and Irish heritage, Keanu Reeves arrived in this world in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1964. His mother was twice divorced while he was a kid and the family moved around a lot, first from Beirut to Sydney, then on to New York and Toronto, where they finally settled; although Reeves has an American green card, he has remained a Canadian citizen. His mixed heritage exposed him to a range of influences, including his first name, which appropriately means “cool breeze” in Hawaiian.
Reeves' first passion was sport. He played ice hockey and showed good potential as a goalkeeper, but prospects of a professional career were curtailed by injury. At 15, he decided he would become an actor, although he never underwent any formal training. Instead, he found his way into acting through television, first working as a correspondent on CBC’s Going Great, which focused on kids who could do amazing things, before making his small-screen debut on teen sitcom Hangin’ In.
He persevered with appearing in commercials, shows and TV movies before heading to Los Angeles to try breaking into Hollywood. During this period, he even considered changing his name because he was worried that casting directors might find Keanu too unusual and hard to pronounce. He toyed with a few options including Chuck Spadina, which would have made him sound more like a second-rate wrestler, but luckily he decided to stick with his birth name.
1986 was a big year for Reeves. He appeared in Youngblood alongside Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze, with whom he remained friends until his Point Break co-star’s untimely passing in 2009; the romantic drama Flying; and a well-received breakout role in River’s Edge.
Further film roles followed, including a part in Stephen Frears' Oscar-winning Dangerous Liaisons, but his star-making gig couldn’t have been further from the stately courts of 18th-century France. A few months later, a goofy comedy called Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) arrived in theatres to little fanfare but went on to become one of 1989’s biggest sleeper hits.
Out of the hundreds of young actors auditioning for both lead roles of Ted “Theodore” Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esq., Reeves was quickly cast as the former, beating out Pauly Shore to the part. That made the rest of the process fairly easy, trying to find someone who would make a good match for him. Among those in contention were Sean Penn, River Phoenix and Brendan Fraser, but Reeves quickly bonded with Alex Winter over their shared love for music and motorbikes.
The infectiously silly time travel comedy coasted along on the amiable qualities of its two leads and their chemistry made the movie. Out of the pair, Reeves was clearly the star-in-making; Ted might have been a doofus, but he was also cute, sweet-natured and sincere, and Reeves was so natural in the role that he hardly seemed to be acting at all.
Indeed, the notion that Reeves was good looking but a bit dim stuck with him throughout the early years of his career and it wasn’t something that the actor was in any hurry to dispel. He self-effacingly told one interviewer,
“I'm a meathead. You've got smart people and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb."
Reeves might have faced the risk of becoming typecast after such a distinctively air-headed breakthrough, but the actor quickly diversified and set the template for his ‘90s ascent to Hollywood superstardom. His next major role came when he was cast in Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break (1991) opposite Patrick Swayze, playing former college quarterback-turned-FBI agent Johnny Utah. The part gave Reeves a chance to showcase his action hero credentials and he took his research to the waves, Although he had never set foot on a surfboard before, he spent months under professional guidance so he would look the real deal in the ocean-bound surfing scenes.
Point Break was a box office success and it gained a cult following and Reeves took another change of direction in its wake. After reprising his role as Ted in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), he went indie in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (also 1991). There, he gave a charismatic performance alongside his friend River Phoenix, who he met while working on I Love You to Death in the previous year. Van Sant’s bohemian road movie has since become regarded as a landmark piece of queer cinema.
Reeves returned to costume drama again with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), adopting a mannered English accent to play Jonathan Harker and essaying Don John in Much Ado About Nothing (1993). The latter was a return to Shakespeare for Reeves, who had previously played Mercutio in a Canadian stage production of Romeo and Juliet before his film career took off. Both films were successful, but in truth Reeves always looked a bit awkward in period togs and he received a Razzie nomination for the latter. 1993 also saw him extend his art house credentials in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha, although his bizarre casting was a little misjudged – Reeves was put in brown-face to play Prince Siddhartha.
He made amends with Speed (1994), Jan de Bont’s high-octane thriller that cemented Reeves’ reputation as Hollywood’s newest and hottest action star. As laser-focused bomb disposal expert Jack Travern, He formed great chemistry with Sandra Bullock and gave an earnestly physical performance. The film was a major critical and commercial success, but Reeves declined the lucrative opportunity to return for the sequel, Speed 2: Cruise Control a few years later. His reasoning was sound, reportedly telling de Bont: “You know, boats aren’t that fast.” 20th Century Fox were not happy with his decision and he claimed he was put in “movie jail” by the studio for the next 10 years.
Reeves' decision to turn down the movie was also based on his reluctance to become further typecast in action flicks as his two subsequent efforts after Speed, Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and Chain Reaction (1996) were fairly uninspiring and performed poorly at the box office. Around this time he also tried his hand at playing the romantic lead in A Walk in the Clouds (1995) and Feeling Minnesota (1996). It made sense given his moody good looks, but that type of fare didn’t really stick – he fared much better playing the straight man to Al Pacino’s scenery-chewing Prince of Darkness in The Devil’s Advocate (1997).
Behind the scenes, the goofy horror legal thriller once again showed how humble Reeves could be. Although he was now a star in his own right, he was happy to defer to Pacino and take a pay cut so the studio could afford to hire the seasoned Oscar-winning legend. It was a trick he repeated to help secure the talents of Gene Hackman for The Replacements (2000) and Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give (2003) – a canny choice, because although he made less money in the short-term, having those huge headliners certainly helped the box office draw of all three movies and propelled Reeves towards his not inconsiderable personal fortune.
Reeves closed out the 20th Century with a movie that elevated him from a Hollywood star to an international icon: The Matrix (1999). The Wachowskis originally approached Will Smith to play Neo, a hacker who becomes a cyberpunk messiah in their groundbreaking dystopian sci-fi thriller, but the former Fresh Prince turned it down for Wild Wild West instead. Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio and Val Kilmer also passed, but their loss was Reeves' gain.
Along with the rest of the principal cast, he was given a heavy diet of theoretical philosophy to read and underwent rigorous martial arts choreography with a Hong Kong master to get in shape for the role. All the hard work paid off as The Matrix became an instant classic and soared at the box office, taking home $467 million worldwide against a budget of $63 million. Rocking the shades and the long black coat, Reeves made Neo an iconic character and returned to complete a trilogy with The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions in 2003 and again for the belated The Matrix Resurrections in 2021.
Typically for the unconventional actor, Keanu Reeves has kept himself busy since the turn of the century but not always in ways you might expect. In the immediate aftermath of The Matrix, he played against type as a serial killer in The Watcher (2000) and an abusive husband in The Gift (also 2000) Neither was particularly well-received and he dabbled again with romantic lead duties, playing a young doctor who woos fifty-something DIane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and re-teaming with Sandra Bullock for chick flick classic The Lake House (2006).
Elsewhere, Reeves was controversially cast as chain-smoking occult investigator John Constantine (a blonde scouser in the DC Comics) and made a good fist of it in Constantine (2005) and went rotoscope in Richard Linklater’s under-appreciated A Scanner Darkly (2006). He played benevolent alien messenger Klaatu in the sci-fi remake nobody wanted, The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) and trained how to fight with a samurai sword for 47 Ronin (2013). Yet, unlike fellow ‘90s heartthrobs Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, his career didn’t quite fully scale the heights that The Matrix seemed to promise. But then someone came along and killed his bloody dog…
Over the past decade or so, we have witnessed the McConaissance and the ReCageissance (my term – and I’ll keep using it until it catches on!) and John Wick signalled the start of the… Keanissance? The film started out as a relatively low-key revenge thriller called Scorn, penned by Derek Kolstad. The basic elements were the same, involving an underworld legend provoked out of retirement, but the character was far older and the kill count was much lower, with the lethal hero only claiming around 11 scalps. Kolstad’s spec script attracted plenty of interest thanks to its tried-and-tested revenge theme, but he was encouraged to accept a lower offer from the relatively unknown Thunder Road Films because shooting could start almost immediately.
True to the screenplay, producer Brian Iwanyk originally considered casting an older actor like Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, or Bruce Willis as the titular assassin – Willis was even attached to star at one point. But then the screenplay found its way to Keanu Reeves, who homed in on the emotional aspect of Wick’s deceased wife, perhaps striking a chord due to tragic circumstances in his own life when his girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, died in a car accident in 2001. Journalists have speculated that Reeves' personal pain and struggles have helped him stay humble throughout his career – two years before Syme’s death, the couple also lost their baby daughter to stillbirth and he acted as caregiver to his sister Kim while she battled leukemia throughout the ‘90s.
Once Reeves was signed on to play John Wick, director Chad Stahelski and producer David Leitch came onboard. Both had worked as stunt performers on The Matrix trilogy and, with their involvement, the movie changed in tone and dynamic from a traditional revenge thriller to a more kinetic shoot ‘em up set in a fantasy neo-noir underworld populated by deadly assassins who even have their own currency.
Reeves was approaching his 50th birthday and once again he went through intensive physical training to get himself in shape for the role. Aside from hitting the gym hard, he added training in a range of martial arts, stunt driving and tactical firearm drills with the LAPD and Navy SEALS. The result was a fluid and exciting variation of Gun Fu, a cinematic style combining hand-to-hand combat with close-up gunplay that has its roots in Hong Kong action movies.
John Wick was a surprise hit, making $86 million at the box office from a $30 million budget. Not bad, but the best was yet to come. The movie evolved into a new cinematic universe with three blockbusting sequels and a spin-off entry, Ballerina starring Ana de Armas, also performing well commercially. There is more to come, with John Wick 5 and two more untitled spin-offs on the horizon – arguably, the John Wick films have even exceeded the widespread success of The Matrix. As for Keanu Reeves himself, 25 years after portraying Neo he has become an inter-generational screen icon.
Meanwhile, Reeves still stays humble, providing the internet with little moments of kindness and humanity amid all the rage-baiting and AI slop, wearing the same old regular clothes rather than flaunting his wealth, taking the subway and giving up his seat, chatting with members of the public, respecting the personal space of female fans, buying lunch and gifts for his crew members, taking his mum to the Oscars and doing plenty of charity work without making a big deal out of it. For him, being mellow and treating people as equals seems to come naturally for such a high-profile star.
Fittingly, Reeves now plays an angel opposite Seth Logan and Aziz Ansari in the latter’s directorial debut, Good Fortune. Ansari admitted he was starstruck when Reeves signed on for the project. Typically, Reeves helped his newbie helmer conquer his nerves by accepting his hospitality, hanging out and eating Ansari’s home-made Indian food. In simple fashion, Reeves has summed up his ethos:
“I don’t want to be part of a world where kindness is a weakness.”
Great words to live by, especially in our trying times when it would be good if more people with wealth and power felt the same way.
So there you have it, a look back at the career and overall niceness of Keanu Reeves. What are your favourite performances? Do you happen to have any personal stories from a chance encounter with the star? Let us know!
