The actor’s mother Patricia Taylor and his half-sister Karina
Reeves would dream about playing for the Canadian National Hockey team in the Olympics as a child. He was a great goalkeeper and even earned the nickname, “The Wall”. If not for his trauma, we’d probably know Reeves as a famous athlete and not an actor.
The actor was carefully preparing for his next big role. The director Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, 1991) recalls, " I think I gave both River and Keanu John Rechy’s book, City of Night as a reference. River read a few pages and called it quits. Keanu read all of City of Night and as many other John Rechy books as he could find. He was always very thorough.“
Reeves has always been hard on himself. After the success of The Matrix in 2003, he said in his interview, “I’m a meathead. You’ve got smart people and you’ve got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.” However, Reeves has read literature on string theory and the origins of the universe. He was interested in the biography of Alexander the Great and even listened to Stravinsky’s compositions.
Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix acted in 2 movies together and became best friends. River Phoenix died in 1993 at the age of 23.
The shooting of Little Buddha took place in Bhutan and in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. According to the actor, the principles of Buddhism promoted consistency and the ability to live in the moment which served as a revelation for him.
The actor was spending his nights in hotels and in his trailer for many years — perhaps due to his childhood spent in constant flux. Reeves bought his first house in 2003 after his success in The Matrix.
The turning point in Reeves’ career was his participation in the action movie, Speed (1994). The movie became a hit and brought its creators $350 million with a budget of $30 million, 2 Oscars, and critical acclaim.
Despite his success in the first film, Reeves refused to participate in Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) as not to miss the chance to play Hamlet in a Canadian theater for a payment of less than $2,000 per week. He did this even though his participation in the movie would earn him about $12 million.
The actor’s next remarkable performance was in The Devil’s Advocate (1997). In order to give the team a chance to afford Al Pacino for the role of John Milton and meet his financial requirements, Keanu Reeves agreed to reduce his salary by several million dollars.
They say Reeves has given a part of his earnings from The Matrix ( $75 million to be exact) to those he considered to be the true heroes of the movie — the special effects team. According to Reeves, money is the last thing he thinks about because the amount he had already earned would be enough for him to live comfortably for centuries.
The Matrix trilogy by the Wachowski duo brought Keanu Reeves the biggest reward in the history of cinema — a total of around $250 million. The actor got his fixed pay and percentage from the box office. In second place is Robert Downey, Jr. who earned about $200 million from acting in the Marvel Universe franchise.
Before the shooting of The Matrix, the actors were supposed to undergo 4 months of training because the stunts in the movie required special flexibility. It was twice as difficult for Reeves because he was restoring his health after a neck surgery at that time. He had 2 damaged disks — one was compressed and one was completely shattered. This meant that whenever he wanted to turn his head, his shoulders and chest would follow due to limited flexibility. Reeves once said that thanks to this movement, he looked dynamic and it’s why he continues to get so many roles in movies featuring martial arts.
While working on The Matrix, Reeves’ life was shaken by tragedy: he and his girlfriend Jennifer Syme were expecting a baby girl but sadly, she didn’t survive. The couple broke up. After a year and a half, in April 2001, Jennifer died in a car accident.
In his interview with Esquire (2017) Keanu Reeves gave a totally different answer to the question about whether he was going to ever get married. He said, “It’s too late. I’m 52. I’m not going to have any kids.” The journalist interviewing him objected saying 52 is a good age for having kids and added that Mick Jagger became a father at a much older age which proves it’s not too late for Reeves to have kids. The actor answered, “I know, I know.”
A family friend builds movie sets and he worked on the set of The Matrix and Keanu heard about family trouble he was having and gave him a $20,000 Christmas bonus to help him out. He also was one of the only people on the set that genuinely wanted to know people’s names, would say hello and mean it, and would talk to people as they were his peers and not below him just because they were practically making nothing to build a set.
Back in the late ’90s and fresh out of college I got my first job as an assistant prop designer on the set of Chain Reaction. Every day for the last few weeks of filming, Keanu treated the stagehands and “grunt workers” (including myself) by taking us out for free breakfast and lunch. Since then, I’ve worked on about 30 different sets and have never met an actor as generous and friendly as him.
I had a few friends working special effects jobs on the Matrix movies. He bought all of them frigging HARLEYS for Christmas.
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