Full Biography

chapter 01: the early years

Keanu Reeves in younger years

Keanu Charles Reeves was born on September 2, 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon. His father is Samuel Nowlin Reeves, half Chinese, half of a rich Hawaiian island family of Oahu. Samuel, geologist, was working for an oil company in Beirut when he met, love and married quicky with Patricia Taylor, an English showgirl and costume designer. Patric was working in a local club when she first met Samuel.

While in Beirut, the coulple lived something like the madness of the 60’s, with Sam at the wheel of your purple Jaguar XKE and Patricia gaily shaking her stuff front of her friends, with her cowboy boots, her jeans and sunglasses. The funds that allowed this hedonist lifestyle came from Keanu’s step grandfather, Colman Abrahams, who made a fortune to publish an edition for children of the British Encyclopedia in Canada.

Keanu and Kim

This wouldn’t be a longer lifestyle, and the romance ended when Keanu was two, but not before join him a sister called Kim, to which Keanu was been very attached throught their lives, when their was living in Australia. Reeves was named after his uncle Henry Keanu Reeves. "Keanu" is a derivation of Reeves’ great-great-uncle Keaweaheulu, whose name means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian. This name has become the only thing that Keanu Reeves is greateful to his father.

Keanu’s parents got divorced in 1966, Samuel returned to Hawaii, and Keanu and Kim spend time there, still children, but at twelve years Keanu saw his father for the last time, when Samuel decided to take a time traveling for the world and joining in a life of drugs that would mark his life, and Keanu’s, forever. Patricia moved to New York City with Reeves and his sister Kim, in 1969, where she met, and subsequently married, Paul Aaron, a Broadway and Hollywood director. The couple then moved to Toronto, where they’d all take Canadian citizenship, but would divorce in 1971.

"The Wall" Keanu playing hockey

In that time Patric worked a lot to maintain her children and for several times she left them with friends and nannies. One of those friends was rocker Alice Cooper that, for a time, lived at the Patric’s house. He tells that Keanu didn’t get scared with the strange types that walked for his house, that he adored to see the band rehearsals and was beating the little hands in the bass to hear the sound. Cooper also revealed that a lot of times he joined Keanu to scare the nanny, on whom they played false vomit.

Reeves’ mother was later married to Robert Miller (between 1976 and 1980) and with him she had Karina, the Keanu’s half-sister, twelve years younger.

Subsequently, Reeves grew up primarily in Toronto and worked at a pasta shop, sharpened skates at an ice rink, and was voted MVP on his high school ice hockey team (De La Salle College). Reeves excelled more in hockey than in academics, as his educational development was challenged by dyslexia. He was so good as a goaltender that he was nicknamed The Wall. Reeves says that he would dream of becoming an Olympic hockey player for Canada. He left the school with only 16 years without degree, because he decided on a theatrical career, and began to seek work in adverts and shows on Canadian TV. After leaving De La Salle College, he attended a free school (Avondale Alternative), which allowed him to obtain an education while working as an actor; he later dropped out, never obtaining his high school diploma.

chapter 02: acting debut

In 1979, he made his professional acting debut in Hanging In, a comedy set in a youth counselling centre. He played a tough street kid, his first line on screen being “Hey, lady, can I use the shower?” By the next year he’d also scored a high-profile part dancing in a Coke ad. The company would employ him again in 1983 when he played a youngster whose disappointment at losing a bike race is tempered when his beloved father hands him a Coke. There’d also be an appearance on behalf of Kellogg’s. Laying out a long breakfast table, Keanu would set out boxes of corn flakes then, overcome by temptation, would pour himself a bowl and eat them with near-orgasmic delight. This would be his first major paycheque.

Coke and Corn Flakes advertisements

"Wolfboy" promotional pics

At 19, he entered in “Leah Posluns”, a school of the community’s theater. Through that school him first role was gotten in the theater, in a called as Brad Fraser’s cult hit WolfBoy at Toronto’s Passe Muraille Theatre. Here he played suicidal teenager, Bernie, who’s sent to a psychiatric hospital where he’s seduced by a disturbed male prostitute who thinks he’s a wolf. The play caused a major stir with its homoerotic content (including an oiled Keanu doing press-ups in his boxer shorts), and would win Reeves his Equity card.

Now his two obsessions - acting and hockey - combined to present an international screen debut. This was in Youngblood, where Rob Lowe played a farm boy who dreams of making it in the Canadian hockey leagues - Keanu appearing as Heaver, a member of the team he tries to join, a team also featuring Patrick Swayze.

Following his premiere in Youngblood, Keanu got Tommy’s paper, a school friend of the actress Olivia D’Abo, in Flying. Although a film of low budget, Keanu had a good paper for a merely unknown. However the theater continued to attract him and his next work was to interpret Mercutio in Romeu and Juliet, directed by Lewis Baumander.

At last he was ready for his assault on the big-time. In his old Volvo he took off for Hollywood, with $3000 and Paul Aaron’s address in his pocket. Paul Aaron had convinced Erwin Stoff to be Reeves’ manager and agent before he even arrived in Los Angeles. Stoff has remained Reeves’ manager, and has coproduced many of his films. Stoff was the one who would persuade him to briefly change his name to the less-exotic KC.

In 1986, Keanu appeared in 8 movies. After Youngbloog and Flying, it cames Act of Vengeance, Young Again, The Brotherhood of Justice, Under the Influence, Babes in Toyland.

Youngblood, Brotherhood of Justice and River’s Edge.

After a minor roles, Reeves would make his American film debut in one of the most important movies of the Eighties - River’s Edge, that became a major Gen X cult hit. This film, based on a true history, had Keanu interpreting an addicted on drugs teenager. In spite of the character to be the murderer’s friend, he ends up making the right thing and callingt the police to take his friend arrested. In a time in that mostly of films shows happy adolescents going to their graduation party, River’s Edge showed the black and cruel side of the time. It was not popular in the box office but its turned a success in video and the effect that it had in Keanu’s career was spectacular, since many of the directors that hereafter would come to work with him saw in River’s Edge the different talent that lacked in that generation.

Following the film’s success, he spent the late 1980s appearing in a number of movies aimed at teenage audiences. River’s Edge had given him a foothold in cinema, despite his turning down the Charlie Sheen role in Platoon due to the excessive violence. His next film was Permanent Record, another shady history on a popular student of a school that commits suicide. With the student’s death it falls to Keanu’s character to sustain the film and the reactions that would follow the event. But Keanu, even in the beginning of the career, it was already stubborn and he refused to proceed what seemed to be the normal road for the success. Instead of starring another depressive drama, he accepted the main role for the comedy The Night Before. In the sequence he made The Prince of Pennsylvania. Unlike their previous works, full of praises, for this film Keanu was very criticized.

chapter 03: an excellent adventure

He decided that, with 24 years, the time was over to continue interpreting teenagers and began to pursue adult papers. So, he moved up a gear by appearing as Chevalier Danceny in Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons. this movie showed Keanu’s determination to succeed as a “serious” actor as, to make it, he turned down the lead in The Fly 2 and took a 90% paycut.

Abdomen scar, gift of a "Demon Riding" in 1991.

At this time, one of the hobbies that Keanu enjoyed was called ‘demon riding’, describing how he often drives with no headlights during the night. On one such ‘demon ride’ in 1998, Keanu Reeves crashed his vehicle near Topanga Canyon. The crash broke several ribs and also ruptured Keanu Reeves’ spleen. As a result of the injuries, and the various operations undertaken afterwards, Keanu Reeves now bares a large scar on his abdomen.

It also began a string of major hits for Reeves. Next came Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the teen comedy that, despite the variety of his roles thus far, would seal his reputation for years to come. Here Keanu played Ted “Theodore” Logan, son of a police chief in the valley and best friend of Alex Winter’s Bill S. Preston. The boys are a dopey pair, far more interested in bodacious babes and heavy metal than schoolwork and are appalled when Ted’s father threatens to send his son to military academy if they don’t pass their upcoming history exam, for which they must deliver an A-graded presentation. Fortunately, they’re visited by Rufus, a fellow from the future, who lends them his time-travelling phone-booth, allowing them to round up the likes of Billy The Kid, Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon and Beethoven and bring them back to present-day San Dimas, along with some “historical babes”. Keanu and Alex become friends, and remains until today.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures

Bill And Ted was a wacky classic, a cross between Time Bandits and Wayne’s World. Brilliantly written and performed, it was a huge hit that launched a long (and increasingly awful) succession of California teen comedies. Reeves moved on to Ron Howard’s Parenthood, a feel-good comedy involving the extended family of couple Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen and their problems with kids of all ages. Here he would met River Phoenix, one of his greatest friends. That instantaneous friendship generated the desire of they work together, what would happen in Keanu’s next film, I Love You to Death. Always working without stopping he did another film, where he interpreted a moved adolescent again, in Life Under Water, with Sarah Jessica Parker.

chapter 04: keanu’s choice

Though in his mid-twenties, his face and by-now expert mannerisms still allowed him to play a moody adolescent with some aplomb - but this, aside from the inevitable Bill And Ted sequel, would be the last time he did it. It wasn’t just his age that brought about this change. Having been acting for over a decade, Reeves was not happy to find himself cast in the minds of many as a mopey, lunkheaded teen. Many, in fact, believed that the success of Bill and Ted was partly down to Keanu and Alex Winter simply playing themselves. “I used to have nightmares”, said Reeves later “that they would put ‘He played Ted’ on my tombstone”. To break the pattern, he strove to vary his roles so drastically no one could deny his efforts.

First came "I Love You To Death", made with now best friend River Phoenix. After this came Aunt Julia And The Scriptwriter. And so, he had the opportunity to make something then different, a romantic role in Tune In Tomorrow. Although always dedicated, Keanu had some difficult filming, arriving in the sets all hurt due to one more of their infamous motorcycle accidents. In that film Keanu appeared very different from their previous characters, with very short hair and time clothes.

Johnny Utah in "Point Break"

Reeves is actually seen by many these days as a bona fide action star but, strangely, he’s only ever made four such pictures (not including Matrix sequels). It’s just that three of them were such enormous hits. The first of these came now, in 1991, with Point Break. Directed by Kathryn “Near Dark” Bigelow, this saw Keanu as FBI agent Johnny Utah, infiltrating an extreme sports gang suspecting of armed robbery. Head of the gang is Bodhi, played by Patrick Swayze (Keanu’s Youngblood co-star) who, it turns out, is stealing money to fund his quest for spiritual enlightenment. Thus the film became a neat combination of cod philosophy and some of the most stirring action sequences ever shot. The skydiving scenes in particular were stunning and surely brought about the making of both Drop Zone and Terminal Velocity.

Keanu finished filming Point Break and was direct for Portland to begin his next project, beside the best friend River Phoenix: My Own Private Idaho, an independent film directed by Gus Van Sant. That was a role that demanded a lot from Keanu as actor and he received many praises from the critic and it increased the number of gay fans, that they were already many, elevating the rumours on his sexual orientation.

Keanu and River, promoting "IMOPI"

The chemistry between Keanu and River worked and both passed a lot of time together, living at Van Sant’s house in Portland. Among the films they played in a band with the whole cast, leaving the night and joining at parties. Although the film has been a mark in both’s career, for reviews and for turning a cult, also marked the both personal life: it was when River Phoenix began to use heroine. Determinated in going more into the character’s disturbed universe, River addicted and, unhappily, the gravity of his disease would only be discovered three years later in a tragic Halloween night.

Right after Idaho Keanu goes direct for the sets of Bill & Ted’s sequence, “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.” In a certain way it went a retreat to him, since he already getting to leave the "air head" image back. But the challenge of doing Ted again (a character that he always liked) was larger, and he accepted to return to the sets beside Alex Winter. However the work were not easy, with a stressed Keanu coming of many works in sequence, that disappeared from the sets and arrived late in the other day. The things went badly, but will still very worse. One day Keanu fainted in his trailer and he had to be taken semi-unconscious to the hospital. Although the official information pointed to an infection, the rumours were that Keanu was using drugs since Idaho and he had a begin of overdose. Keanu denies it later, telling that he had already used drugs since his eitghteen, but that was a moment where he was only addicted in motorcycles.

Without stop working, Keanu left a classic role to another, but not for the best reasons. He accepted making Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Still in his disturbed phase, full of insecurities and acting beside great names as Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman, Keanu didn’t get to find the character’s right tone. It was not just for Keanu, but during the filmings many problems happened, as the Oldman’s allergy to Conde Dracula make-up. Everybody thought the film would be a failure, the previews had been terrible, but the film was an enormous box office success. However he brought Keanu the worst critics of his career.

"Freaked" and "Rush, Rush"

Having made four following (Point Break, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, My Own Private Idaho and Dracula) films without rest, a drop in pace was inevitable, but his need to be always in movement impelled him to do a cameo in Alex Winter’s crazy comedy Freaked (as Ortiz the Dog Boy). In that time he also participated in Paula Abdul’s clip, Rush Rush, where he spot as James Dean.

Reeves moved on to more Shakespeare with Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing as the baleful Don John - Kenneth used to say that he will pay to see Keanu in tight leather pants. In sequel, besides Uma Thurman, came Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. But what would come to next would surprise fans and critics, and it would turn an outstanding work in Keanu’s career.

chapter 05: an impossible innocence

Keanu as Siddhartha

The legendary director Bernardo Bertolucci had seen Keanu and wanted to find him to talk about his new project: Little Buddha, the history of Siddhartha, the prince of the century 6 that would come becoming “The Illuminated.” Bertolucci had already tested many actors for the role, of several different nationalities, and didn’t get to find somebody to have the necessary Asian appearance and still the personality the role needed.

Keanu went to Central Park, in New York, for an interview with Bertolucci, and the director knew then that Keanu was exactly what he sought for the role: “So soon we met I was fascinated with his huge naturalness. I didn’t know if his personal life was complicated or not, but his face and movements revealed an impossible innocence.”

It was the innocence that Bertolucci sought. Who, besides anybody appear total innocence and ingenuity, could interpret a prince that had lived so protected that only to 29 years would discover what death and suffering meant? Keanu said: “I am 29. Siddhartha had 29 when it began his search, then I, ironically, am also in the beginning of my journey for the spirituality.”

Filming in Bhutan and Nepal

The filmings began in a small mountain in Bhutan, and for Keanu it was excellent because TV didn’t exist in that country, so nobody knew who he was. For him, it was to live as annonymous. When they change the location to Nepal, all this calmness ends, but Keanu could enjoy it as much as he could.
Some people believed that Keanu had dived in that universe, proceeding many other stars of Hollywood and converted to the Buddhism. That didn’t happen and he was Siddharta for the time that the filmings took. But he learned a lot and he was really interested in everything that he read.

Keanu’s mugshot

When it was launched, in 1995, Little Buddha received a few good reviews, as Keanu, but they continued comparing him with the airhead character Ted. Keanu’s behavior didn’t also help and their whole nights were known in Hollywood, proven for the happened on 1993, when he was arrested in Los Angeles for the charge of drunk driving. On the night of May 5, 1993, Keanu Reeves was spotted driving erratically, at which time he was pulled over. Reeves was arrested for driving drunk, at which time he promptly confessed to the crime and avoided any charge in the matter.

His mugshot was spoted in all newspaper, and then he recognizing himself his own father, having decided to rethink certain attitudes and what he was doing of the own life.

Chapter 06: That bus movie

As always Keanu continued his own journey and what would come to follow it would throw him for roads still ignored. The total stardom, turning a revolution in male roles in action movies: Speed.

Keanu accepted the role in an unknown director’s film and a premise almost stupid: a policeman has to block a bus walks below certain speed through the streets of Los Angeles, or it explodes. It didn’t seem a hit, and many in Hollywood referred it as the “that bus movie.”

Keanu still had another problem: the movie producers wanted him with the "Point Break" look, and it was easy because Keanu has his hair almost on shoulders. But in the beginning of the work, he appeared with the head scraped. He said that there were no SWAT policemen with long hair. The producers wanted a wig, but Keanu refuses to use. The director, then, convinced the producers that in two weeks his hair would increase a little bit, but there were not changes only in the hair. Keanu worked out a lot and arrived to the set with a physical body stronger as never seem before.

Keanu and River Phoenix

Everything was fine. Keanu was happy, he did a lot of action scenes with no stunt double. His relationship with movie partners, as Sandra Bullock and Dennis Hopper, was the best ever. However, everything turns down with River Phoenix’s death, during the eighth week of filmings.

Phoenix was one of Keanu’s best friends. In the night of October 30, 1993 he had an overdose in front of the Viper Room (that belonged to Johnny Depp at that time). Keanu refused to talk about it and to do homages to him. He didn’t go to the wake or the funeral. After a while, he just said “it was a terrible shock and an accident. I don’t get to understand how it happened.”

The Speed director, Jan de Bont, reorganized the calendar of filmings to accomodate Keanu’s feelings without having to stop totally out, mantaining him working in a way to forget a little that tragic event. Times later Keanu would say: “Everything that I can saying is that I never felt anything as that in my life. It was very sad, more than that, I cried hours and hours.”

Samuel and Keanu at left. At right, Samuel during an interview.

When Speed was launched in the summer of 1994, was an huge success. It made $ 330 million of dollars around of the world and it elevated Keanu’s career to the top. Until his haircut it turned habit among the youths. In the middle of that phase full of interviews, magazine covers, hallucinated fans, once again Keanu’s life suffered a blow. Abandoned for his father when was a child, and without seeing him for 17 years, he saw Samuel turn headlines of the tabloids when being arrested in Hawaii by heroine traffic and sentenced to 10 years of prison. The media, ofcourse, ran behind the history, and Samuel gave countless interviews speaking about his wish of reconciling with the son, that refused giving him a chance.

To worsen, a rumor, that had begun with a note in a gossip magazine, took the world and thousands of people started to believe in the speculations about Keanu’s sexual orientation. The history was that he there was married in a secret ceremony in Hawaii with the magnate, partner of Dreamworks, David Geffen (assumed gay).

In the cover of OUT magazine

Geffen denied the rumours, saying that he never had meet Keanu. but, of course, telling that he would love to met him someday… Keanu laughed of the rumor, finding everything very funny. But the things left control and probably their agents forced him to do an official report explaining everything. And he did it, to OUT, a popular gay magazine, that dedicated to him a special edition where he denied the marriage, giving one of his best interviews but, once again, do not declare his sexual option, leaving for each one to find what wants. In his classic sentence Keanu says “No, I´m not gay, but ya never know...”

Chapter 07: Time for Challenges

Having reached the stardom in Hollywood, it was hope that Keanu continued to follow the road of the movie action. But he always acted out of patterns, and following his heart, he committed to do a project of dreams: Hamlet, of Sheakespeare. In a small producion, in Winnipeg (Canada), directed by Lewis Baumander and with several stranger actors. The tickets was out in a few days, with fans coming from everywhere (a huge group came from Japan, surprising the press with their devotion to Keanu), turning the play a tourist attraction in the city.

Keanu as Hamlet

Critics of the whole country and from England were also to Winnipeg, to see Keanu and we can’t even imagine the pressure he suffered at that time. There was a rumour that their agents refused go to see him, fearing a public humiliation of a guy that should be in Hollywood making films and not in Canada, in a small and insignificant theater. Keanu was nervous, received a lot of bad reviews but didn’t give up. He went getting better until came to where he wanted. One of the most respected theater critics of England, Roger Lewis, said that Keanu was one of three better Hamlets then he had already seen. He said that Keanu "was Hamlet".

Keanu stays in Canada to his next movie. Sadly, unlike Point Break, Speed did not launch Reeves into a period of particularly interesting work. Indeed, it was Failure Time. First came Johnny Mnemonic, written by William “Neuromancer” Gibson, where Keanu played a courier with a hard-drive in his head, a hard-drive carrying vital information that will kill him if it’s not downloaded quickly. It was a great idea, there was a cool cast including Ice-T, Henry Rollins and Beat Takeshi, but it failed to hit midway on the Thrillometer. His next action attempt, too, wouldn’t hit the mark. In Chain Reaction, he and Rachel Weisz played researchers on a project that discovers a cheap, pollution-free fuel. Bad news for many powers-that-be. And so they find themselves framed for murder and pursued relentlessly by just about everyone.

At this stage even his indie efforts weren’t really up to scratch. The sappy romance A Walk In The Clouds saw him as an unhappily married man who decides to help a pregnant Mexican girl by pretending to be her husband. The grungey, sleazy Feeling Minnesota had him running off with his manipulative brother’s wife (Cameron Diaz) and being tailed by a private dick. Then came the Beat Generation drama The Last Time I Committed Suicide where he played Neal Cassady’s drunken, pool-playing buddy. It was all good practice, but generally half-baked stuff.

Playing bass in his band Dogstar.

After three years without a hit, many would have taken the easy option and reprised an earlier success. But, unlike Sandra Bullock, Keanu now turned down Speed 2, because he didn’t like the script. He choose to go out with his obscure band "Dogstar". This was an outfit he’d formed in 1993 with Bret Domrose and Robert Mailhouse, Keanu providing bass. They’d put out an album, Our Little Visionary, in 1996, and would release a follow-up, Happy Ending, in 2000. And this was no scrappy ego-trip, either. At one point the band would actually support Bon Jovi.

But to Hollywood, Keanu’s career was done.

chapter 08: right to the top

At right, Keanu after the accident. At left, after the surgery.

During this break, he suffered one more motorcycle accident in Los Angeles. It resulted in a broken leg and other great scar. Walking for Sunset Strip, Keanu tried to deviate of a car and he beat it, flying of the motorcycle. He lost the conscience but quickly returned, being most concerned with the motorcycle than with medical cares. Few days later, he returned to stages.

It came to his hands then a daring project where could work with the star, and idol, Al Pacino: The Devil’s Advocate, originally to have starred Brad Pitt. Keanu accepted to interpret a sharp Florida lawyer Kevin Lomax, directed by Taylor Hackford. This film had everything to be a success. But the things didn’t run so well as he could imagine and Keanu and Pacino didn’t feel so well at the backstage. It is known that Al claimed that Keanu heard high music in his trailer. Pacino is not known by being a great friend in the sets and with Keanu it was the same thing.

Keanu also had a problem with stress and had to go through a doctor to end with a “shrill sound” in the ear that tormented him. In that time, also, he already suffered the effects of the countless motorcycle accidents and the column gave problem signs. He told that it had begun, in the bath, to lose the balance and after the filmings it went by a complicated surgery where had to receive a metal plate to fasten a disk in the column, in the height of the nape. During Devil’s Advocate promotion he appeared using an orthopedical vest and one more scar could be seen, now in the neck.

At least , Devil’s Advocate was a success. In spite of the obscure theme and of being rated to 18 years, the film made good box office. And his performance as Kevin Lomax impressed Warner, that shows him the script of two new directors, Larry and Andy Washowsky, a mix of kung-fu and fiction that several stars had already refused - Ewan McGregor and Will Smith turned it down. Keanu fell in love with the history and accepted to do the film. The pre-production work was difficult, with a heavy training, still more for him that was recovering of a column surgery. The rest of 1998 was spent preparing for and filming what would be one of 1999’s biggest hits - The Matrix.

The Matrix: trainning, filming and promoting.

What nobody knows, not even Keanu, is that The Matrix would become the revolution of the movies in the end of the century. The concept of action movies totally changed after the The Matrix release, and Keanu was spoted at higher status in Hollywood. The movie also was a HUGE success in the box offices, also being the most sold DVD in 1999. Keanu would take $10 million for his involvement, plus an incredible $35 million box office percentage.

After The Matrix, Keanu went back into training for sports comedy The Replacements, this time learning to be a football quarterback. Based on the 1987 players’ strike, the movie had Gene Hackman as a coach who must put together a pick-up side to keep the season going.

Chapter 9: A Sad Season

At right, a very pregnant Jennifer shopping baby clothes with Keanu.

Keanu was always very reserved as his personal life, and is restricted to that until today. It was always a great challenge to know more about him and his life. But with the huge success of The Matrix, he become being focused by the press, that would like to know more about the reclusive actor.

Baby Ava funeral.

In 1999 we got the news: Keanu will be father. His girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, was pregnant and would give birth in December. They wouldn’t get married, but would continue together and Keanu bought a house for Jennifer in Los Angeles.

With the situation under control, Keanu continued filming. Unfortunally, a just few days of the birth, it was discovered in an ultrasound that the baby, a girl whose chosen name would be Ava, had died in Jennifer’s womb. On December 24, 1999, in an induced childbirth where Keanu accompanied Jennifer, the baby was removed and then buried at the cemetery of Los Angeles. The child was registered like Ava Archer Syme Reeves.

Back to the business, Keanu had the good sense to revisit the dark places he explored to such effect in Much Ado About Nothing. In The Watcher, he played a serial killer who sends cop James Spader into a breakdown, then follows him from LA to Chicago to continue the bad work. It was interesting stuff in that Reeves’ killer needed his pursuer so badly, but it actually wasn’t a film that Keanu wanted to make. Once he had fulfilled his contract (and kept his mouth shut for the legally required period), he revealed that he’d agreed to make the movie for scale as the part was small and fascinating. But then the part was enlarged and Reeves found himself being paid millions less than co-stars Spader and Marisa Tomei. Beyond this, he claimed that it was actually a friend of his who’d signed the contract, forging Reeves’ signature. Unfortunately, fearing the same kind of trouble Kim Basinger suffered when she pulled out of Boxing Helena, he just had to go through with it.

No worries - his next picture was genuinely excellent. In The Gift, written by Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Sam Raimi, Cate Blanchett played a card-reader and wise country woman who gives good and kind advice to the locals, including Hilary Swank who’s getting badly beaten by husband Keanu. The film was packed with fine performances, especially from Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi, but Reeves outshone them all. His Donnie Barksdale was cruel and vicious, but far from a one-dimensional villain. Reeves had actually visited counsellors to understand the abusive character, and had spent three weeks driving around Georgia. Really, the performance could easily have been Oscar-nominated.

Keanu’s rollercoaster career continued with Sweet November, a remake of a 1968 Sandy Dennis vehicle. Here he was reunited with Charlize Theron when he played a hard-nosed ad-man picked up by a bohemian girl who, it turns out, takes men into her life for a single month in order to improve them.

Jennifer funeral.

In 2001, Keanu then signed a millionaire contract for stars the two sequences of The Matrix, and began to trainning strong, still in the USA. But in April, a new tragedy will affect Keanu’s personal life. Jennifer Syme, his daughter’s mother, suffers a car accident in Los Angeles and died instantly. The couple, spite of not be dating after the Ava’s death, were still close friends. There were rumours about a reconciliation, but never confirmed. The fact is that Keanu was devastated. He offered to identify the body, and was Jennifer’s mother company during all the process. Jennifer was buried besides her daughter, Ava, in Los Angeles.

The Matrix production stops until he got recovered, then he moved to Australia, to a full year of intense work.

The show needs to continue

Kim and Keanu in Hawaii.

It was a season of many happiness in the movie set, where Keanu felt among friends, that we discovered that Keanu faced one more battle in his turbulent personal life. Kim, his newer sister, that was already struggling against an aggressive type of leukemia and it was in redemption there are some years, it had presented symptoms of the disease again. In December 2002, Keanu would leave the set of The Matrix to take her to Hawaii, keeping her in absolute luxury.

And now came The Matrix sequel. Indeed, two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions having been filmed back to back. Having given up a payment of around $38 million to get the movies made (one battle sequence alone cost $40 million), Keanu returned as Neo, now with only 72 hours to prevent 250,000 probes from discovering Zion and destroying the last human city. Both released in 2003, the Matrix movies would be enormo-hits, even by Reeves extraordinary standards. And now his decision to take a percentage cut instead of an upfront fee really paid off. Conservative estimates claimed he made at least $206 million from the Matrix trilogy, maybe as much as $330 million. At this point, he was the highest-paid actor in the world. The highest-paid and one of the most generous, gave away more than $US80 million to effects and costume designers who worked on the The Matrix movies. Asked about his prodigious act of generosity, the actor said he already had enough cash. “Money is the last thing I think about. I could live on what I have already made for the next few centuries”. Keanu is well known for his generosity. While filming the sequels in Australia, he surprised 12 stuntmen by giving them Harley-Davidson motorbikes.

Something’s Gotta Give, Thumbsucker and Constantine

Following Matrix 2 and 3, he ended 2003 in a very different movie, Something’s Gotta Give. This saw Jack Nicholson as an aging music biz Lothario who’s dating a far younger Amanda Peet. She takes him for a romantic weekend at the Hamptons home of her playwright mother Diane Keaton, only to find mum’s actually there. Nicholson has a long-overdue heart attack and is rushed to hospital, where he’s seen by straight-laced and caring doctor Keanu. And now the complications begin, as Reeves gets the hots for Keaton, who in turn begins to fall for the now-vulnerable Nicholson. Usually, it’s easy to see why women would fall for Nicholson, but this time, with Keanu so moral, so charming, so gallant, the competition would be stiff in more ways than one.

Having begun a relationship with actress Autumn Macintosh (rekindling the sparks of a brief fling in the early Nineties), Keanu reappeared on our screens in 2005 in two wildly varying productions. First came Thumbsucker, a resolutely indie piece featuring a teenager who, as the title suggests, still sucks his thumb.

A world away from cultdom would be the blockbuster Constantine, which would see Reeves remain with Tilda Swinton and also reunite with Rachel Weisz for the first time since Chain Reaction. Based on the comic book Hellblazer, this would see Keanu as the chain-smoking, depressive supernatural detective John Constantine, a man who can see the angels and demons who walk among us. Reeves, familiar with this territory after the Matrix, made Constantine deliberately, manically morose, as befitted a man in his position, and it was perhaps the film’s darkness that prevented it becoming the mega-hit its $100 million budget demanded.

Still in 2004, Keanu join in another surprising project: the movie A Scanner Darkly, directed by Richard Linklater, based on the master’s of the fiction book, Phillip K. Dick. Keanu also reunite with Winona Ryder after 12 years. Scanner narrates the drugs experience of policeman Fred that, addicted in the "D" substance, the higher drug of that time, develops two personalities and is not aware that he dealer he seeks, Bob Arctor, is himself. The filming of this movie was completed in 23 days; the animation process took 18 months.

Chapter 11: Definitevily a star

Hollywood’s Walk of Fame

On January 31, 2005, finally Keanu was awarded with a star on the famous Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. In his speech, he remembered his mother Patricia: “When I was 15 years old and a kid in Canada, I was doing a play called ‘Romeo and Juliet. I asked my mom if it was OK to be an actor. She said, ‘Whatever you want.’ So thanks mom.”

Reeves accompanied former Speed costar Sandra Bullock to the 2006 Academy Awards. This caused some controversy, as Bullock is married to motorcycle builder Jesse James. It was later revealed to be a publicity stunt to coincide with the release of their romantic film The Lake House. This, a remake of the 2000 South Korean hit Siworae, had Bullock playing a doctor moving out of a glass house by a lake and Reeves playing an architect moving in. Both are troubled, Reeves in particular being overshadowed by architect dad Christopher Plummer, but they begin a relationship via letters and fall in love, their only problem being that he thinks it’s 2004 while she’s existing in 2006.

In March 2007, Keanu was behind the wheel of a Porsche that allegedly grazed a celebrity photographer standing in the path of the sports car. Keanu’s lawyer said, in occasion, that the paparazzo was standing in front of Reeves’ car “blocking his way” when Reeves got into his car to leave, appearing as though the photographer was trying to cause the encounter. In November, the photographer sued Keanu for suffering shock and serious injuries because the accident.

Keanu as Tom Ludlow

Keanu currently is promoting his new movie Street Kings. Keanu Reeves is Tom Ludlow, a veteran LAPD cop who finds life difficult to navigate after the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he’s been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him. The movie received a few good reviews beside others complaining about the violence.

On upcoming, two more works: The Day The Earth Stood Still, remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth. And The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, based on Rebecca Miller’s novel of the same name.

Note: This is not an official biography. All information has been gathered from various interviews and articles and is accurate according to my best knowledge.

Biography © KeanuConnection.com, 2000-2008
Last Updated: June 2008