eanu is back as a badass cop in the edgy Street Kings. He plays detective Tom Ludlow, an idealist at heart who breaks rules to honor those do-gooder instincts. Those insanely satisfying indulgences catch up with him when his former partner is murdered after he is thought to have snitched to IA. Fortunately for Keanu fans it takes a white-knuckle action ride to clear up the resulting misunderstanding.
Keanu Reeves waits for his interview on the NBC "Today" television program, in New York's Rockefeller Center, Wednesday April 9, 2008. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Keanu Reeves has acquired a reputation as one of Hollywood's odder figures, enhanced by the apparent lack of a successful love life. For possible causes, go back to 1999 when he was expecting a daughter by girlfriend Jennifer Symes, a 28-year-old struggling actress. They had even picked out a name together (Eva Archer Symes Reeves). A few weeks before the delivery date, Symes suffered a miscarriage. According to friends, the loss sent her into an emotional tailspin, triggering episodes of erratic behavior. The couple had long split by April 1, 2001 when Symes was killed in a drug-induced solo accident. Reeves served as a pallbearer, along with director David Lynch, Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro and Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian.
Reeves is interviewed on NBC's "Today" by weathercaster Al Roker, left, co-host Meredith Vieira, and White House correspondent David Gregory, a guest co-host, Wednesday April 9, 2008. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
From time to time Reeves has been spotted with other women, including Amanda Peet with whom he appeared in the Jack Nicholson comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003). But talk of Reeves's love life has mainly centered on anecdotes of solo club and restaurant appearances and exits, suggesting some weird inability to find a girlfriend. Reeves has done his part to promote the impression that romantically he's a bonehead. In mid-September of 2003 he admitted to being single and available, then added that he is "Begging, pleading," in response to a Cosmo interviewer's question as to whether he is ÒlookingÓ
On his 39th birthday (September 2, 2003), Reeves was spotted eating pasta alone at Dan Tana's, a celebrity hangout on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. A half dozen model/starlet types came up offering to help him celebrate but received no sign of interest. Disappointing behavior from the man American women chose in November of 2001 as the Hollywood star with whom they would most like to cohabit a desert island. (In China, France, England, Brazil and Argentina Reeves came in second.)
Reeves's preference for his own company may not be strange. At around that time his sister Kim (who is even better looking than Keanu) had begun relapsing back into her leukemia, cancer of the bone marrow. Born two years after him to the same mother and father, Kim Reeves is a horsebreeder who had initially been diagnosed with the disease in December of 2002. The news had sent Reeves rushing from the Matrix sequels shoot. He had flown her to a luxury resort in Hawaii with the thought of bringing ease and joy to her last days. Several months later Reeves bought a luxurious Hollywood Hills mansion, ending nine nomadic years of living in a succession of hotel rooms, and converted a large part of it into a hospital-quality care unit staffed with top specialists. By summer of 2003 Kim began showing remarkable improvement, encouraging the hope that she was on the road to recovery.
Despite Reeves's brotherly solicitude, and presumably the best medical attention money can buy, by late September Kim's relapse became official. She was forced to endure another series of painful treatments. The bad news hit Reeves hard. "During shooting breaks, unless he has to rehearse or talk to the director, he'll sit alone, often just staring at the ground," a studio executive was quoted as saying. Friends worried that Reeves might become reclusive and quit acting. "The diagnosis that it is back has really hit him hard," one friend told Sunday Express "It seems to have pushed him to the edge."
After that Reeves put his career into a state of semi-retirement while devoting much of his time to Kim. Against that emotional backdrop the lefty with a lifelong fear of the dark can be excused for not being more of a ladies man.
And despite the hundreds of millions Reeves has earned, largely from the Matrix successes, money doesn't seem to be an overriding priority. His preferred ride is a 1974 850cc Norton Combat Commando, and his big indulgence is playing bass for little-known bands Dogstar and Becky. He gave away a big chunk of his Matrix salary to members of the production team. He bought $9,000 Harleys for each stuntman. Four years ago, when he was much less wealthy, he deferred part of his salary on The Replacements (2000) so Gene Hackman could be cast. In 2003 he spent weeks in the Oregon mountains filming an indie called Thumbsucker because it happened to be a friend's first directing gig. His generosity and loyalty is especially notable as Reeves didn't begin life with abundance and emotional stability.
Keanu Reeves was born September 2, 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon to a Chinese-Hawaiian geologist named Samuel Nowlin Reeves and an English showgirl turned costume designer named Patricia (also Patric). Keanu was named after his great, great uncle. The name is Hawaiian for Òcool breeze over the mountains.Ó His sister Kim was born two years later while the family was living for a year in Australia. Samuel Reeves seems to have had a drug problem that caused him to be separated from his family for long stretches of time. Keanu was in elementary school when his parents divorced.
Patric moved with the kids to New York City. Samuel returned to Hawaii. Keanu seems to have been close to his father then, regularly visiting him in Hawaii until the age of thirteen. The visits seem to have ended because of Samuel's run-ins with the law for drug dealing and possession. The most recent was for selling heroin at Hilo airport in 1992. He was convicted in 1994 and sentenced to ten years in prison but was paroled in mid-1996. Father and famous son have never reunited.
In New York Patric met film and stage director Paul Aaron. They married, moved to Toronto and assumed Canadian citizenships (which Keanu holds to this day). The marriage lasted less than a year. Patric had several more relationships before marrying rock promoter Robert Miller who fathered Keanu's half-sister Karina in 1976.
From kindergarten through the eighth grade Keanu attended Toronto's Jesse Ketchum Public School. He wasn't keen on academics but his parents harbored college hopes and enrolled him in a prep school called De La Salle College. His success as goalie on the hockey team earned him the nickname "The Wall" and an MVP award. His main interest was drama. At the age of 17 he dropped out to pursue acting full time while working at a series of part-time jobs like landscaping, sharpening skates at an ice rink and managing a pasta joint at which he was also head pastamaker. He enrolled in the Toronto School for the Performing Arts and started being cast in bit parts on Canadian TV. In 1984 he made his professional stage debut as Wolfboy.
Keanu's first big break came in a hockey flick shot in Canada called Youngblood (1986). Reeves played the French-Canadian goalie of a Canadian Junior League team to star Rob Lowe's troubled rookie. Not long after the movie wrapped, Keanu loaded up his aging Volvo and drove to Hollywood armed with $3,000 and the address of stepfather Paul Aaron. At his manager's suggestion Keanu briefly changed his name to K.C. Reeves to avoid being typecast as an exotic. In any event Reeves's consciousness never seemed to have been burdened by questions of his actual ethnic heritage. He has described himself as "a bourgeois, middle-class white boy with an absent father, a strong-willed mother, and two beautiful younger sisters."
Before long Reeves landed River's Edge (1987), a critically praised coming-of-age drama. His creditable performance opened the door to a series of teen misfit roles. The one that was to leave the most lasting mark was dufus Ted in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), a box office windfall that quickly developed a cult following among the bong-and-brownies set. It established for all time Reeves's bona fides as Everydude. He has yet to live down his remarkable success in capturing the whacked-out mindlessness in which rudderless teen males seek their glory. Every film in which Reeves has starred for 15 years after has succeeded or failed in direct proportion to the extent he has evoked the Everydude experience.
Over the next decade Reeves took on a string of roles in serious dramas like My Own Private Idaho (1991), Dracula (1992), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Feeling Minnesota (1996) and The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997). The most notable exception was Speed (1994) in which Reeves first tapped into his phenomenal appeal as a big-budget action star. Despite the movie's smashing success Reeves declined the inevitable sequel because he didn't like the script. The fact that it bombed has been cited by some writers as evidence of Reeves's acumen in judging the quality of projects. That assessment hasn't been borne out by the tanking of the projects he did take: Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and Chain Reaction (1996). It wasn't until 1999 that Reeves's ship -- actually an armada of three -- would come in with The Matrix and its sequels.
This isn't to suggest that Keanu Reeves hasn't been genuinely appealing in many of those films, as well as in weak but watchable romantic trifles like A Walk in the Clouds (1995) and Sweet November (2001). It's just that the appeal seems founded largely on his staggeringly blocked, rudderless brand of charisma, with his effort at acting serving more as an endearing sideshow than an aid to dramatic development.
(AP Photo/Richard Drew) |
Reeves pretends to run away after his "Today" interview. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) |