Keanu Reeves back as John Wick
After more than 30 turbulent years in Hollywood Keanu makes a triumphant return as the mysterious John Wick
GLOBAL CITIZEN His mom’s British, his dad’s American with Chinese-Hawaiian ancestry and he was born in Lebanon and grew up in Canada. His dad, Sam, abandoned them when Keanu (52) was three years old and his mom, Patricia Taylor, trekked him and his younger sister, Kim, around the world while working as a costume designer. They eventually settled in Toronto, Canada. In 1994 Sam was arrested and imprisoned for selling heroine. “The story with me and my dad’s pretty heavy,” Keanu told Rolling Stone magazine, adding that they’ve lost touch. “It’s full of pain and woe and loss and all that s**t.”
LIFE AND LOSS The actor has had more than his fair share of tragedy. On Christmas Eve 1999, his girlfriend Jennifer Syme gave birth to the couple’s stillborn daughter. They named her Ava Archer Syme-Reeves. Less than 18 months later Jennifer, an actress and personal assistant, was killed in a car accident aged 28. “Grief changes shape but it never ends,” Keanu said in an interview. “I wonder what the present would be like if they were here – what we might have done together. I miss all the great things that will never be.” He’s said he’d like to marry and have kids, but he has yet to do so.
NOT SO SAD A picture of a sad-looking Keanu eating a sandwich on a park bench a few years ago became an internet meme and a Facebook fan page (unofficially) declared 15 June “Cheer-Up Keanu Day”. Although he sees the funny side of it, the actor thinks the biggest misconception people have about him is that he’s sad all the time.
SPEED WOBBLE “Ever since I was a young kid I wanted to act,” Keanu says. He started acting professionally at 16 and hit the big time with movies such as Point Break (1991) and Speed (1994). But then came the offer to do a sequel. “When I was offered Speed 2 I read the script and I thought, ‘I can’t – it’s called Speed and it’s on a cruise ship.’ ” Even the offer of a $12 million (then R60 million) pay cheque didn’t change his mind. “I told them [the studio], ‘If I do this film I’ll not come back up. You guys will send me to the bottom of the ocean and I won’t make it back up again. I really felt like I was fighting for my life.” He wasn’t offered work by that studio again for more than a decade.
COMEBACK KID Bagging the role of Neo in The Matrix trilogy, one of the most successful movie franchises of all time, was a career high, but the star jokes he “kind of went to studio movie jail” for a few years afterwards when some of his other big-budget films such as The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) didn’t do so well. Box-office and critical success came again only three years ago with the revenge thriller John Wick. In the sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2, Keanu reprises his role as the retired hitman and gets to act alongside his Matrix co-star Laurence Fishburne. The movie has already garnered rave reviews, with critics saying it’s even better than the first. But Keanu is as modest as ever. “I’m maybe a little closer to being able to break into that world again . . . I don’t know.”