Intro
With a net worth of $380 million dollars, and has been in all the Matrix series, Keanu Reeves has been professionally acting since he was 15 years old. Keanu is an actor, musician, producer and philanthropist. He is known to be one of the most humble and charitable actors in the business. He is a co-founder of Arch Motorcycle Company, which sells custom motorcycles. While owning one of his own, Keanu loves to ride his bike and travel to different places where he can relax and get away. In the mid-1990s to the early 2000s he also co-founded a rock band called Dogstar and played the bass guitar.
Successions
From starring in all the Matrix movies, to being the main character in all John Wick movies. Keanu has had a lot of successful movies in his career. He tends to not talk about his past tragedies and hardships a lot but, his character of choice is usually someone that has been through similar hardships as him like in John Wick. He did his first acting role at the age of 9, in the theater production of “Damn Yankees”. From 1985 to 1997 he played in many different movies for example, like ”Point Break”, “My Own Private Idaho'', “Chain Reaction”, and “The Devil’s Advocate”. Then in 1999 the first “The Matrix” movie came out which started up his popularity in his career. After that In 2001 “The Matrix Revisited” came out alongside “The Matrix Reloaded” in 2003 and “The Matrix Revolutions”. For the films The Matrix he has trained with martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, for all the stunts he did. He then later played in a very popular movie called “John Wick”. While making between 1 million to 2 million dollars on just that one movie.
Obstacles
To be known as the most humble actor in the business, he’s had his hand full of obstacles and sad moments in his life. From having his best friend die, to losing his unborn child as well as losing the love of his life, to also being asked to change his name. While acting in the movie “My Own Private Idaho”, Keanu met River Phoenix. While playing the two best friends Mike Waters and Scott Favor, they themselves became best friends. After playing in that movie together River Phoenix went to later on play in another movie, which led him to then get involved with drugs. He later overdosed in 1993, which was a loss for Keanu, but he decided to keep moving on. Around the time he was shooting sense for The Matrix. In 1998, just five years later he met Jennifer Symes. People say that they “fell instantly in love”. They were together for about 10 year before conceiving a child together. Sadly only 8 months into pregnancy their child was a stillborn, they’re daughter would have been named Ava Archer Symes- Reeves. For that reason, because of the intense grief after experiencing the loss of their child they decided to end the relationship a couple of weeks later. Unfortunately in 2001, Symes was on her way back from Marilyn Manson’s house and was killed in a terrible car accident, at the age of 28. Years later Keanu expressed his never-ending grief in an interview in 2006, and how because of their deaths he has avoided serious relationships and having children. When Keanu first started to professionally act, his agent thought that it would be best if he changed his name because it was too complicated. Yet he said that he’ll stick with the name his mother gave him and he’s had successfully using his name since.
Background
Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon and was raised in Toronto. At a young age his father left his mother and sister, Patricia Taylor and Kim Reeves, because he struggled with substance abuse. Afterwards, he and his family would move from Sydney, to then New York City. By the time they relocated to New York he was a struggling highschooler that was removed from 4 different schools and at one point was expelled. Aside from struggling socially he also suffered from dyslexia which made it harder for him academically. Eventually he dropped out of school and at that point was when he began to pursue acting.
Acts of Kindness
In 1991 his sister, Kim Reeves, was diagnosed with blood cancer. He has donated almost 70% of what he made in the Matrix films to a private foundation to Aid Children’s Hospitals and Cancer Research. He’s been one of the most frequent donors, and has also set up a non-profitable organization, to raise money for the research of leukemia. He has dedicated a lot of time to volunteer and to fundraise events to help people become more educated about cancer and different cancer treatments.
Article : "Who is Keanu Reeves?"
Written by : Angelina Portes
FluentRadio Spring 2022 Intern