Keanu Reeves is 60: 10 Things You Might Not Know About the Matrix Star

Happy birthday, Keanu!

If you are a true fan of Keanu Reevesyou probably already know that his first name, of Hawaiian origin, is pronounced “Ki-anu” and means “a cool breeze over the mountains”. But are you really an expert on the actor who plays Neo in the cult trilogy? Matrix ?

Matrix: Let's dive back into the Première archives with Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves' career is a mystery. A jack-of-all-trades who enjoyed critical and/or public success in the 1990s (My Own Private Idaho, Point Break, Little Buddha, Speed, Devil's Advocate, Matrix), the Canadian actor will have experienced a much more complicated decade of the 2000s, to the point of being overtaken by his internet image (the “Sad Keanu” in the lead), dragging the burden of his cult character (Neo) under the eye of uninspired directors.

Keanu Reeves continues to fascinate, and has proven to us with John Wick that he still had some left in his veins (you can read here our review of the latest opus). A discreet man, exuding a simplicity and humility rare in Hollywood, the barely sixty-year-old with the eternally youthful face astonishes and clashes, feeding all sorts of fantasies and legends.

Trying at all costs to remain someone “normal”Keanu is not the best client to gather facts mind-blowing, but to celebrate this anniversary, we suggest you test your knowledge of the life of this comedian who is definitely not like the others.

Keanu Reeves: “It was not a question of playing John Wick as a Terminator super-killer”

Keanu has survived several tragedies…

Born in Beirut, where his parents met, Keanu Reeves was shuffled around Sydney, Australia, New York, then landed in Toronto at age 7, where he would spend most of his youth. His father having abandoned them when he was only 3, Keanu saw a succession of stepfathers (his mother married four times in total). He suffered from dyslexia, regularly changed high schools and was kicked out of an art school.

“I was too uncontrollable and I spoke out too often. In general, I wasn't the most efficient in the school. I went against their method I think…”he confided in 1988 about his difficult youth. To top it all off, his father was incarcerated for selling heroin.

In December 1999, his partner Jennifer Syme gave birth to a stillborn daughter named Ava. The couple separated shortly after, then in the spring of 2021, Jennifer Syme was killed in a car accident.

Since 2018, Keanu has found love again: although very discreet about his private life, he is sometimes accompanied by the artist Alexandra Grant on red carpets.

He supports several charities, including one fighting cancer, following his own sister's diagnosis with leukemia.

…and physical accidents (on a motorbike or while filming)

Keanu Reeves' passion for motorcycles has landed him in the hospital a few times, most notably in 1988 when he went off the road on a curve on Topanga Canyon Boulevard leading from the Los Angeles Valley to the Pacific Ocean.

“I call it a demonic ride,” he told in 2000 Rolling Stone. That's when things go wrong. I remember thinking to myself, 'I'm going to die.'”

He lay there for half an hour before help arrived, and he got away with a nice scar on his stomach.

On set, Keanu tries to do his own stunts as much as possible, well before Matrixfor which he trained with a neck brace, having injured his back just before the shoot. Recently, it was on the set of a comedy that he damaged his knee. And long before that, it was on Speed that he had insisted on being behind the wheel of a racing car. An anecdote told by Jan De Bont, the director, in Première, in 1994:

“I knew he was a great driver and I let him drive the Jaguar in the bus chase. He had rehearsed with the stuntmen and actually did it better than them. After that he was full of adrenaline and wanted to do all his stunts!”

In 1999, still in our pages, Keanu also confided in us that he had given his all for the first film in the Wachowski saga:

“I stayed for hours and hours on the edge of a skyscraper that was maybe 50 stories high… I was only held by a rope. At first I wasn't very reassured, but I ended up really liking it.”

Keanu has his own motorcycle brand

His motorcycle accident clearly didn't put Keanu off, far from it. The actor continues to ride motorcycles and even founded his own brand, Arch Motorcycle, with Gard Hollinger. About ten years ago, they marketed their first model, the KRGT-1, a beautiful baby with a retro design weighing 270 kilos and sold for $78,000.

Keanu believes in ghosts

As he has repeatedly claimed, Keanu Reeves met a ghost in New York when he was a child. During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, he told this incredible story again.

“It was cool. I must have been 6 or 7, we had just moved into a new apartment, I was with my nanny in the bedroom, we were looking towards the door and suddenly we saw this jacket floating, there was no head, no one in it, and then it disappeared. I was a child, I thought it was cool, but my nanny was terrified.”

Keanu is 167 years old

Until he emerged with a graying beard very recently, time seemed to have little hold on Keanu Reeves… which has left Internet users obsessed. According to the site Keanu is immortalthe actor would literally be immortal, as in the film Highlander. With the help of montage, there would be no doubt that Keanu Reeves would in fact be the new identity of Paul Mounet (1847-1922), a French actor whose body was not found after his death. The ultimate clue? Mounet and Reeves both played Hamlet in the theater.

Keanu is a street hockey player…

Growing up in Toronto, Keanu played ice hockey as a goalie, and at a very good level (he was nicknamed “The Wall”the wall). “He had a gift,” his coach at the time said. “He had a raw, acrobatic, unrefined talent, but he managed to pull off victories.” A passion that continued when he moved to Los Angeles to become an actor, as he revealed during a chat on Reddit.

“It was a new world for me and I saw some guys at a gas station who had hockey equipment in their car. They told me they played street hockey, and I asked them if I could play. So I joined this street hockey game that was held every weekend for over 10 years, red against black. It was cool, I made friends.”

…And bassist

Like many American actors, Keanu also had a small career as a musician, as a bassist, precisely. He played in the alternative rock band Dogstar, formed following the chance meeting between Keanu Reeves and Rob Mailhouse, the drummer, who wore a hockey jersey. After a first EP entitled ““Four Cheeses” (you couldn't make it up!), Dogstar released two albums and performed at the famous Glastonbury Festival in 1999 before splitting up in 2002 after a final concert in Japan… and reforming briefly very recently to play to a sold-out crowd.

These actors who are also musicians and singers

He is not interested in money

This could be a pose, except that the facts are there. Keanu is the kind of guy who refuses a big check ($11 million) to make the sequel to Speedleaves Hollywood to go play Hamlet in a small Canadian theater, drastically lowers his fees so that other stars can join him in the cast of a film (Al Pacino on The Devil's AdvocateGene Hackman on The Replacement) and reportedly dropped about $75 million (sources vary) on the sequels. Matrix in favor of the teams working on special effects or costumes. Before offering any gifts to the John Wick teams, especially his stuntmen. In private, Reeves would be just as generous: as mentioned above, he devoted a lot of time and money to help his sister in her (victorious) fight against leukemia.

Keanu is a fan of Michel Houellebecq

Dostoevsky, the complete worksIn Search of Lost Time by Proust, William Gibson, Tolkien, Philip K. Dick, the series of novels Rabbit Angstrom by John Updike, Richard Yates, The Count of Monte Cristoand even Elementary Particlesby Michel Houellebecq (“When I read that my head exploded!”), Keanu Reeves is known to be a big fan of literature.

Whenever he has free time, he devours a book, like during the filming of Speed where he read Shakespeare to pass the time between takes.

Keanu is happy

Because of the famous meme Sad Keanuinspired by a photo of the actor looking depressed while sitting alone on a park bench, and his difficult childhood, the public tends to think that Keanu Reeves was truly a sad man. However, the actor told Reddit users that he was “someone very happy”adding: “I think you can make a photo say a thousand things without a single one being true…”

15 (true) Ryan Gosling facts