Keanu Connection

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.