Why Does Everyone Love Keanu Reeves?
In light of the release of Bill and Ted Face the Music, coupled with my recent first viewing of the 1993 movie Speed, I started thinking: what is it, exactly, about the man, the myth, the legend, the — if the rumours are true — immortal icon Keanu Reeves, that makes him so universally loved?
Usually, actors come and go: from about 2008–2012 you couldn’t say shit against Robert Downey Jr. because a lot of people genuinely thought he was Iron Man. Chris Pratt was The Actor for a (thankfully) short amount of time, it was Benedict Cumberbatch during the two seasons of Sherlock that didn’t suck, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s kind of been an undercurrent in everyone’s collective consciousness since Donnie Darko came out in 2001. (Worryingly I’ve just noticed every one of these actors is in the MCU. Do Marvel cast their actors based on how much the public likes them? Kind of a genius move if so, but please don’t put Keanu through your evil corporate movie-making machine! Thanks!)
Keanu, however, seems to have strung his popularity out along fairly long period — his career started in TV in 1984, and he hasn’t really left our screens since then. From a filmmaking perspective, he couldn’t be more versatile: he’s done comedy (Bill & Ted, Always Be My Maybe) action (Speed, Point Break, John Wick) and sci-fi (The Matrix); he also appeared in horrors The Neon Demon, and the zany adaptation Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If you were so inclined (this’d make an easy Letterboxd list) you could make a Venn diagram entitled Movies Where Keanu Reeves Speaks Shakespearean Dialogue, which would include Much Ado About Nothing and My Own Private Idaho. That’s not to mention appearances in family films like Toy Story 4 and upcoming video game Cyberpunk 2077. Our man has done it all! Keanu says: just try typecasting me, bitch!
But unlike a lot of actors considered the Greatest Of All Time, Keanu doesn’t go ‘method’, or throw tantrums on set, or gain and lose a hundred pounds at the drop of a hat for his roles. There are never any tales of on-set drama (linking another Christian Bale article here. I like the guy a lot, but). The closest we’ve come to folklore about Keanu’s shenanigans on set is that adorable story about him having a crush on Sandra Bullock during Speed, which, despite her reciprocating these feelings, he never told her about. Why? ‘We were working,’ he told Ellen. That’s just the kind of guy he is. I get the impression Keanu rides onto set on his motorcycle, does a day’s work, then rides off into the sunset again without much complaint.
It’s because of this low-key approach to acting, coupled with some fairly scathing reviews for some of his work (his ‘English’ accent in Dracula was not, um…amazing) that has led Keanu to be thoroughly looked over as a capital-A actor. In Angelica Jade Bastién’s reverent essay The Grace of Keanu Reeves, the author writes: ‘Through a variety of high profile blockbusters, low-key dramas, and interested misfires in period pieces, Keanu is still stuck in the amber of our first impression; we don’t treat him with the seriousness he deserves. At best, Keanu is regarded as a guilty pleasure. At worst, he’s seen as a truly bad actor of little worth.’
And, OK, some of his acting is a little goofy. The ‘Conspiracy Keanu’ meme couldn’t have happened to just anyone. The overt seriousness of both his personality and some of his roles can be a little overblown at times, but the result is a levity that you just don’t get with most other actors of his age or calibre.
But forget the movie critics; everyone knows they’re always wrong anyway. It’s the public who have honoured Keanu, however tongue-in-cheek, as immortal, god-like, beyond critique, just as much as we recognise his humility, how down-to-Earth he always comes across in interviews; reports of his humble (for a Hollywood star) way of living go viral once every couple of years. He reportedly waited until he was 40 before buying his first property; that’s not to mention the millions of his own wages he gave to the special effects team for the Matrix.
I haven’t even touched on his good looks, I guess because I don’t really need to. Us spoiled Millennials/Gen-Zs are used to the chiselled machismo he sports in John Wick — that beard and that long hair, Wick stalking around New York like the world’s angriest hipster — but ’90s and ’00s his appearance was much less traditionally masculine, even as his roles tended to be. Bastién writes: ‘I’ve found myself attracted to Keanu’s presence because of the way he marries typically masculine and feminine qualities.’ His square-jawed shaggy-haired tough-guy exterior is so unlike the elfin-faced, pale young man audiences of yesteryear fell in love with in Point Break and The Matrix: reserved, coolly blank, but still cheeky and charming: a heart-breaking combination.
It’s a face that has spurred many a meme. From Conspiracy Keanu to ‘You’re breathtaking!’ to, my personal favourite, Keanu Reeves Existentialism via the Twitter account @keanuthings: pap shots of him outside bars and cafés, alone, looking like he has the entire world on his shoulders (see also: Sad Keanu). Who can’t relate? Haven’t we all sipped a drink (alcoholic or otherwise) whilst contemplating life, and come to the unbeatable conclusion of: Fuck This?
The memes are also proof that inside the actor that we know for his goofiness, his lovability, his incredible filmography, is just a human being like the rest of us. Even in his middle age, it’s hard to not think of the tragedies Keanu suffered as a younger man: the stillbirth of his daughter, Ava, with his then-girlfriend Jennifer Syme, who died in a car accident two years later. His sister, Kim, has battled leukaemia for ten years. He has as much a right as anyone to sit on a park bench looking forlorn. It might be this personal grief that has awarded him the nickname from Time magazine as “Hollywood’s ultimate introvert.”
Because, let’s be honest: while very few people in the global north resist the lure of Hollywood fascination, there’s a bit of loathing there, too. The H-word conjures up images of Kardashian-types; unfathomably wealthy, removed from reality, coddled by a loving audience that can’t get enough of them. We keep up with their lifestyles on Instagram and Twitter and on news sites, but how much of that is compulsive clicking, and how much of that is because we really, truly, like them? And who amongst us can’t admit to a bit of Schadenfreude when someone’s star falls, or when someone’s movie flops? Schadenfreude that really only comes about due to the narcissism that Hollywood has built itself upon. None of us thought James Corden could possibly be brought down a peg until he made the fatal mistake of appearing in Cats.
Keanu doesn’t fit that mould. Maybe that’s why we love him so much. He doesn’t do his utmost to go viral. He doesn’t ‘gram his newest expensive shoes. He rides his motorbike, and makes movies, and dates very cool, age-appropriate women. We don’t get sick of him, because we arguably don’t get enough of him in the first place.
The formula for being universally liked is so precise that very few people, ever, master it. It’s not beauty, it’s not talent, it’s not kind-heartedness; it’s all of those things and a little something else. Keanu has perfected that formula: he has that something else.
And his name means ‘cool breeze over the mountains,’ for crying out loud! He’s Canadian! He’s Neo! To quote Bastién: ‘There are actors we admire, and then there are the stars we love. The best of them get under our skin, becoming a part of our lives, following us through tragedies and triumphs. Keanu is one of those stars…Actors like Keanu — who find beauty in stillness — are why film was created in the first place.’
