Keanu Connection

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.