Keanu Reeves - Rises & Falls
Keanu – pronounced: Kee-AH-noo – Reeves, 57 years old. With a career spanning across more than three decades. And with a kind of success that only few of his colleagues dare dream about. But it is not a success that has come on its own. And on a personal level, his life has been marred by tragedies that could shake even the most unfeeling soul.
He was born in 1964, in Lebanon. His mother, Patricia Taylor, was a showgirl and costume designer, and his father, Samuel Reeves, made a living as a geologist. The father left them when Keanu was only tree years old. It was the start of a tumultuous life, and his mother moved to Hawaii, Australia, and New York, before finally settling down in Canada. Dyslexia turned getting an education into a bigger challenge for Keanu Reeves than for most of his classmates. He worked hard, but after four different high schools, he dropped out of school at 17.
In return, Keanu Reeves is a more than competent ice hockey player. He is quick on his skates and shoots hard, which has resulted in several goals. And not least it led to a tryout with the Windsor Spitfires – a junior elite team in the Ontario Hockey League. But despite an obvious talent, he was tried and found lacking: His fists did not swing freely enough to join in the fights that are almost mandatory in Canadian ice hockey.
A little weird, considering that he later in his career is more or less the definition of a hard-hitting action hero, who kicks and punches his way out of all the precarious situations. And it is not any less weird when one movie magazine after the other claims that he does not use stuntmen as stand-ins for the violent scenes in the movie trilogy The Matrix (1999, 2003 x2) and the three John Wick movies (2014, 2017 and 2019).
But there is a good explanation: Keanu Reeves actually knows how to fight. He has mastered several types of martial arts. Before filming the first Matrix movie in 1999, he practiced for months with the martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping. Reeves and the rest of the team had to practice everything from jujutsu, Wushu, and boxing to Krav Maga, judo, and karate. The reason for having to learn several different types of martial arts was the directors’ wish to be able to construct the single scenes more freely as they were filmed. In the John Wick series, his focus was more on weaponry. But here, too, he had to gain some new martial arts skills. This time it was aikido, which is a modern type of Japanese martial arts.
Tragedy Strikes
His first casting was for the Canadian youth program Going Great in 1984. Already the same year he had his acting debut in a TV series called Hangin’ In. And the next year he entered the stage in a production of Romeo and Juliet in North York, Ontario. But it was not until 1991 that the movie world discovered Keanu Reeves. It happened with the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures. 1991 would also become the year in which would leave the world of youth films and series behind. That happened with the movie My Own Private Idaho, in which the two leading actors – River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves – take off on a character-building journey. It is a story loosely based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV drama.
Reeves has said that he, once he had read the script, got on his motorbike, and drove the 900 miles to his best friend, River Phoenix, to convince him that the part was written for him. The duo was cast for the movie. But sadly, it was also a time that threw the promising young River Phoenix into serious drug abuse. An abuse which ended tragically with an overdose of valium, cocaine, and heroin only two years later. He was only 23 years old.
His death was harsh on Keanu Reeves, who claimed that he should have been able to do more for his friend.
It would not be the last time that tragedy and death were to play a role in his life. Five years after his friend’s death, he met Jennifer Syme. It was a fast and all-consuming love story. A year later they were about to become parents to a little girl. But in the middle of recording the first Matrix movie, labor started much too early, and their daughter was stillborn. Soon thereafter, their relationship crumbled, and as if that was not enough, Jennifer Syme was killed in a car accident a year and a half later.
In 2006, Keanu Reeves spoke about his grief in an interview with the magazine Parade. “The grief changes. But it never stops. Some people wrongly believe that they can handle it and say: ‘It’s over – I’m doing better’. But they are wrong. When the people you love are gone, you are alone.” Reeves has several times said that the deaths of his girlfriend and daughter are the reasons he has avoided long-term relationships and having children. On top of it all, his sister has fought leukemia. Thankfully she is back to full health, but it was a harsh period for Keanu Reeves, who after the success with The Matrix donated over 70% of his proceeds to hospitals who treat and research leukemia.
Even though Keanu Reeves is not fond of talking about his painful history, it is notable that he tends to pick roles portraying men who have been through similar setbacks in life. As in the John Wick movies, where he plays a murderer out for revenge, motivated by the loss of his wife – and dog. “To me, it was John Wick’s grief that made it personal. The feeling was so strong that he would dig up his past. I don’t really think about it as revenge. But rather as the possibility to win back one’s life,” Keanu Reeves has explained.
On the personal level, Reeves has managed to look inwards. He has processed his grief and thought many thoughts about death and the possible after-life. A flirt with Buddhism has come from the attempt to create context in a life in which he has experiences so much grief. Even though fear of loss earlier has kept him from new, steady relationships, he has now been dating the American artist Alexandra Grant, whom he has known since 2009. Together they have published two books.
But it is the movie world that is Keanu Reeves job. Something we could clearly see now at Christmas, when the fourth Matrix movie premiered. And not least now in spring, when the fourth chapter of the John Wick tale enters the cinemas.
The Generous Reeves
The world has always loved the mild and humble Canadian actor Keanu Reeves, who through the years has acted in box office hits such as The Matrix and the John Wick movies. Successes that also have turned him into a wealthy man with a net fortune of around 360 million dollars. Not least franchise income from the Toy Story movies, in which he voices the stuntman Duke Caboom, plays a part of that.
Throughout the years he has donated large and small sums to charity. One special story is often making the rounds on social media. When he was filming The Matrix, he happened to hear that a handyman on the team was going through an especially tough period. That made Reeves send him a special Christmas bonus of 20.000 dollars. And while he was filming The Matrix Reloaded, he presented the 12 stuntmen on the team with a brand-new Harley Davidson motorcycle each.
Rumors, possibly exaggerated, tell us that over the years he has donated almost 100 million dollars to those he is closest to in his everyday life: that is, various members of the film teams he has been working with. To this you can add the millions of dollars that he has donated to hospitals who research and treat leukemia. This, of course, is out of gratefulness that his sister survived a long treatment for the disease.
But everything is not about money. Once he took a detour of almost 100 km to help a young girl. He likes hanging out with the homeless. Not for the sake of attention, but because he can make a difference. And when he celebrated his 50th birthday, New York Magazine tells us, it was on a bench in Central Park with muffins and coffee, which he offered to passers by who wanted to share the day with him. A REAL MR. NICE GUY.