Keanu Reeves' secret is more complex than the Matrix... But let's try to decipher it

PARIS, HALLOWEEN EVE. Sitting in the booth of a Parisian brasserie, with half a cappuccino in a porcelain cup, Keanu Reeves fiddles with his mobile screen with his left hand, covered in cuts with dried blood. “Let's see, where is he...”, he blurts out. He searches for a text message he sent nearly two years ago to Carrie-Anne Moss, his co-star in the Matrix franchise. Keanu Reeves arrived at the appointment a few minutes ago, on time, having slept about five hours. We are at Le Grand Colbert. The last time he was here was in 2003, during a very long night, with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, shooting the end of When you least expect it. Since then he had not set foot in the place again.

He wears a surgical mask, a black knit hat over his long black hair, a black biker jacket, and jeans. He shows his vaccination certificate to the maitre'd before entering the bright room with high ceilings, huge globe lamps, brass railings, clinking glasses, and waiters in immaculate shirts and dark aprons. He removes his mask and walks through the restaurant, while diners and waiters watch him. It's a surreal moment, like a time jump. Like when Meg Ryan drops by Katz's for a pastrami sandwich.

He stops at a table to chat with someone who had worked with his girlfriend, artist Alexandra Grant. He walks past the cubicle where the famous scene was filmed. People always ask for that table. Today, the woman sitting where Keanu Reeves sat – because she loves that movie – has looked up from her and, seeing him, she almost choked on her snail.

She keeps looking at the mobile. "Ugh, that hurts, doesn't it?", she commented to him. "Hand". She turns her hand over and looks at it, showing a cut running down the side of her palm from her little finger to her wrist bone. "Oh yeah," she says. "Occupational hazards!".

Keanu has an appointment with me to promote Matrix Resurrections, the fourth installment of a multi-million dollar franchise, although the reason he is in Paris is to shoot the fourth installment of John Wick, his other multi-million dollar franchise. "Now we're shooting at night, and today we finished at seven in the morning," he explains to me, brushing his hair back, still damp from the shower. "I just woke up". It's a quarter past one. Cough a little.

I keep looking at his hand. "Doesn't it hurt?" For a moment he looks at me blankly, but then he realizes that I'm the one who doesn't understand. "Oh no, this is all movie blood," he laughs with amusement. "It doesn't go away with the first wash."

He goes back to his phone, focused. He scrolls through dozens of messages, a blur of alternating blue and gray text bubbles, the gray ones—the other person's—sometimes punctuated with emojis and hearts. "Sorry it's taking so long," Keanu blurts out. An apology that surprises me because she is doing me a favor: she is looking for a text message that I have asked her for, which contains proof that she is doing someone else a favor, in this case Moss (she was the one with the emojis and the hearts).

"It's weird reading this again," he confesses, lost in text messages in the same way one scrolls back in time. "Very timely for Resurrections." He continues to search in silence. Realizing there will be a very long dead time in my recording, he leans in and says out loud, "I'm still looking for the list."

Towards the end of the shooting of Resurrections, Moss asked her to recommend good movies to watch with her teenage children. “In the Matrix movies, I always felt like I was his partner, and he was my partner,” Moss told me. “I never had the feeling that he was the star. His work ethic is unlike anyone he's ever met: he trains more, he works harder, he cares more, he always asks more and more questions to understand the depth of what we're doing. And while he was doing all that, he always had a moment for me. Like when I asked for those movies. I know it seems like a small thing, but even being so busy – he's exhausted – he took the time to put together this very thoughtful list.

"He's here somewhere," Keanu mutters. “Is there anything else you want to talk about while I search?”

A month before

"Are we already in October?" It takes a second. Not because of the widespread disorder that the pandemic has caused. No. Keanu takes a second because he's been in Paris for two days – no, wait, this is the third – and before that he spent six months in Berlin, shooting at night and sleeping until mid-afternoon. What he calls "vampire hours." He has packed his bags and has come here without going home and, well, one gets lost with so much change. But yeah, it's October 2, or 3. It's Saturday. It's three in the afternoon and he just woke up. He has had toast with peanut butter and honey, and is drinking coffee from a crystal glass. He sports John Wick's beard, which he periodically trims to the same length throughout the months of filming. After coffee... "Wait a minute."

He looks at the phone on the table and smiles. "Sorry, it's not three, it's four in the afternoon." We are on Zoom. He is in Paris, but sitting in front of a white wall. He could be anywhere, often he is.

Soon the night shoots will be extended. A call at seven in the evening may well turn into one at two. He now he is with physical training. And shooting fight scenes, where he runs and jumps.

"So those nights are about to get even rougher?" “Hard? Come on man. We're making a movie!" He makes a face, he laughs: "Hard?"

Today it is cloudy in Paris. At 15°C, Keanu is wearing the beanie and a black zip-up fleece. He always carries too many clothes for these long expeditions, and a handful of books that he won't have time to read but that he likes to take with him, although he has just finished Trouble Boys, a biography of the band The Replacements that a friend gave him for his birthday.

It's just another day in a place he doesn't normally live. He works, sleeps, and when he's not working, he's "still busy with work": this is time he spends training, preparing scenes, developing the next project... "What if, in the midst of traveling and shooting at night, you Do you wake up feeling bad, with tired bones or a little sore throat? He puts on that face again, that disapproving smile: “So? Well, you drink a hot infusion with lemon and honey. I don't know. Or you slap yourself in the face." He slaps himself in the face. “Stretches your muscles. Focus, man. Concentrate.”

He is 57 years old. More than two decades have passed since the first Matrix movie was released. Twenty-seven years since Speed. Thirty-two since he introduced the world to Ted Logan in The Amazing Adventures of Bill & Ted. And here's the guy: filming the new John Wick, promoting the new Matrix. "I'm just trying to have a career," he declares.

Some of his characters over the years may seem downright goofy: Ted, of course, but check out his charming performance in a movie called A Prince in America. Others are so serious and undaunted that they seem implacable: Thomas Anderson in The Matrix, Wick, Johnny Utah in They Call Him Bodhi. However, you know that there is always something more. We believe his characters because they are not scared under any circumstances. They know something, and we want to know what. He puts it down to the fact that the scripts are well written. Or to the work of directors. "I'm just one more piece," he says. And one thinks: “Yes, but no”. There is something he does not reveal. Do you know something, Keanu, that escapes us?

Pure Keanu Moment #1

When Keanu was about 24 years old, in 1989, Ron Howard cast him in Sweet Home...Sometimes. He played Tod, a teenager who liked car racing and dated Julie, a popular girl (Martha Plimpton). Julie's little brother was played by Leaf Phoenix – who later changed his name to Joaquin – whose older brother was Plimpton's real-life boyfriend. This is how Keanu met River Phoenix.

River was then living in Gainesville, Florida, less than two hours from Universal Studios in Orlando, where Sweet Home... Sometimes was filmed. Since he liked to be with his girlfriend and his little brother, River was on set all day. Plimpton and Keanu liked each other from the beginning, she introduced him to River, and then the three young men started hanging out. Sometimes 13-year-old Leaf was added to them.

On screen, Keanu and Plimpton hit it off as a young, serious, tortured couple with heart problems.

“We just like each other,” says Plimpton, explaining why Tod and Julie became one of the most memorable teen couples of the '80s. “We were friends. We had a good time. We went to Disney World. We did road trips. We danced to Michael Jackson's Off the Wall album in our caravan. We liked each other."

While they were there, Bill & Ted's Amazing Adventures opened, and Keanu, Plimpton, and River went to the movies to see it. They took a motorcycle trip to... Key West? –no one is quite sure– to see the indie-rock band The Feelies. Plimpton was only 18, but later, at the bar, he had a beer. “We were playing pool and Keanu went to the bathroom. Suddenly the lights came on and I looked up and there was a policeman. He asked me for identification, and I was terrified because they had caught me. Then Keanu shows up and berates me: 'What have you done? Have you had a sip of my beer?' He tried to bail me out.”

WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE KID, KEANU REEVES SOMETIMES RID THE SUBWAY ALONE TO THE END OF THE LINE. He was a boy who, after school, played hockey with other children until nightfall in the streets of the bohemian neighborhood of Yorkville, in Toronto. Or they had chestnut fights. Other afternoons he wandered alone. There were only two subway lines in Toronto, and he lived near the midpoint where they met. He took one of the two, to the Kennedy stop, or got on and off the different cars: the children traveled for 25 cents, and he could do it for hours. In the end, when he arrived at the last station, he was walking through an unknown part of the city. He was never scared. He wanted to see what was out there. Nowadays, when he is in a new city, Keanu is more comfortable than you or I would be.

Pure Keanu Moment #2

"He knows how to listen," says Sandra Bullock. “And that drives people crazy. Much".

Bullock met Keanu on the set of Speed ​​(1994). They had friends in common. And the same publicist, so sometimes they'd end up at the same Hollywood event and have a drink afterwards. They never hooked up. "No," she assures. She maintains that it would have ruined a great friendship. “But who knows?” she adds suddenly. “It seems to me that Keanu is a guy who is friends with all the women he has dated. I don't think there is anyone who has a bad thing to say about him. So maybe he could have worked. I do not know. But there was nothing. We just take parallel paths. From time to time we meet for dinner and try to work together. The more time passes, the more I am amazed by the human being. Would I have been able to say that if he had left me and made me angry? Probably not".

A year or so after Speed, Bullock and Keanu bumped into each other. The subject of champagne and truffles suddenly came up in the conversation. Bullock blurted out that she had never had champagne or truffles. She said it like someone who doesn't want the thing, without giving it any importance. "Really?" Keanu asked him. "No, I've never tried them," Bullock replied, and the conversation turned to other topics.

Within days, Bullock was sitting with a friend in the living room of the little house she had just bought. They were painting their nails. She heard an engine outside, which turned out to be Keanu's motorcycle. She rang the bell and Bullock opened the door to find him with flowers, champagne, and truffles. She blurts out: "I thought you might like to try the champagne and truffles, to see how it goes." She sat on the sofa. Bullock poured some champagne and they opened the truffles. Keanu removed his hands from her, saying nothing, and Bullock painted his nails black, just like them. She didn't stay long. In fact, she had an appointment, which she called to tell her that she was on her way, and she left.

"That's what I mean by it drives you crazy," says Bullock. “When I met him, I did not stop talking, to make him feel comfortable. And the more I chattered, the more he shut up. And I thought: 'I don't understand what's wrong with him! He looks at me with confused eyes. He is silent. Have I said something that he has offended?' And then, days later, he'd come in with a note or a little package, and he'd say, 'I've thought about what you said the other day.' And he gave you his answer.” Bullock, who sometimes talks like a whirlwind, is silent for a moment. She then asks, "How many people do you know who are like that?"

"IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT while I dig through my phone?" A gray rain has begun to fall in Paris, but inside Le Grand Colbert, waiters fly in carrying plates of roast chicken and chateaubriand, people laugh and order more wine, a boy in a bow tie stabs a profiterole the size of a balloon with a tiny fork... It looks like a holiday.

I ask Keanu how he manages to connect so well with others; it's something you always read about him and people tell me about. Of course, no one is charming all the time. (“I don't want my words to make me sound like a fucking Zen Buddhist monk,” Martha Plimpton emphasizes.) It seems more like he has something we can learn from. "Oh yeah?" She is surprised. “Well, of course there is something like that. There is a part that is given to us and another that we learn. Not everything is given to us according to our nature.

It really interests me to know where he gets that character from.

"In terms of the biological, psychological, cultural and genetic breakdown, I'm sure there's a lot of stuff in there, but that's why I brought up the idea of ​​nature, because even as a kid I was quite an empath." Okay, wait, here we go. There was another list, but this was the last list. “New list of movies recommended by KR”. It's a mix of Reeves movies with other things:

The Neon DemonA clockwork orangeRollerballCarnal loveRed phone? We Flew To MoscowThe Seven SamuraiAmadeusRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are DeadHell's HauntingArizona BabyThe Big LebowskiNikita Die HardThe ProfessionalYoung FrankensteinHot SaddlesKnights of the Square Table and Their Crazy FollowersThe OutlawMad Max 2: Road Warrior

He stops, eyes still on the phone. He smiles. "Yes, yes, this was for her."

HE LEFT HOME AT 18 WITHOUT GRADUATING from any of the four institutes he attended, and at twenty he left Toronto driving a British race green 1969 Volvo 122 straight to Los Angeles. He read Philip K. Dick, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, and William Gibson. Things that made you think. He read Shakespeare over and over again. Sometime in 1990, having already appeared in a dozen movies, he read a Henry IV-inspired script called Gus Van Sant's My Private Idaho: the story of a couple of hustlers who make do, desperate to live on limit. He did that movie with River Phoenix.

And then six or seven years later, he read The Matrix, a script by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. “I just underlined it,” he explains. “I thought [does Jimmy Cagney voice]: 'Wow, this is my thing!' He knew that kind of thinking very well, he had read a lot about multi-personality universes and different perspectives. So when I came across the script, thinking about that reality and that matrix, and then the agents in the anime and the idea of ​​thought control or what is reality and what is virtual reality... yeah, I felt very comfortable”.

“Those are the stories and storytelling perspectives that I prefer. There is always a relationship (a drama, a circumstance) in the narrative. But for me it's great when a work of art can entertain but also be inspiring or challenging, or (I'll bring up old Bard) be able to hold the mirror up to nature. It's much more rewarding because it means you're getting into it. You ask questions. You look at the diamond and see how it refracts and reflects light. It can be everything from 'Be great to each other' in the circumstances of Bill and Ted and those characters who have everything against them, to The Matrix, which is, you know, 'What is truth?' . It makes you face control systems and think about will, and love, about who and how we are. Even if you take Sadistic Instinct, where there's a group of high school kids and a murder. What decisions do they make? And then the impact of technology on storytelling: playing A Scanner Darkly, or even Johnny Mnemonic. Little Buddha, directed by Bertolucci and introducing himself very, very broadly into Buddhist thought and practice. The notion of non-permanence and the connection between your own body, thought and feeling, and the relationship of your senses with the world and its meaning. Face your own mind. Learn to meditate, to have experiences of mental expansion without any other stimulus than the will, thought and sitting. You really understand that there is so much more going on in the world! What's going on?".

There is no head tilt. Keanu shifts in his chair and stares straight ahead.

Pure Keanu moment #3

Hearing others talk about Keanu, he seems almost Confucian in his ability to understand people. And to listen to her. Is that what he knows?

It's about that, about people, about others. He loves movies, yes. He loves stories. He can't stop working: 68 films in 35 years. More stories, always more stories. Bad things happen in life. Keanu has seen people disappear: his father, almost always absent; then his daughter, lost in the cruel fate of prenatal mortality; to his partner in life, missing in a car accident. And his friend River, who overdosed at 23, when Keanu was 28.

In our Zoom call, I ask about him. “It's weird for me to talk about him in the past tense,” says Keanu, nearly thirty years after River Phoenix's death. “I hate talking about him in the past. He was a special person, creative, original, unique, intelligent, talented, thoughtful. Brave. And fun. And dark. And bright. It was great to have met him. Yes. Inspiring. I miss him".

Bullock was close friends with Samantha Mathis, who was dating River in 1993. All three had starred in Peter Bogdanovich's country music movie That Thing Called Love that year. When River died, he had started production on Speed. Bullock was getting to know Keanu.

“I witnessed Keanu's sadness. And oh, how he suffered for his friend, ”she recalls. “He is very reserved, but he couldn't hide it. See how such a man grieved. I remember thinking, 'Gee, if that's just the tip of the iceberg of his fondness for a friend...'. It's something that captivates you."

Of course, we have all lost someone. And we all react differently. In his case, it's a way of saying, "We're all in this together, looking for...whatever people are looking for." "I think you do everything you can for your loved ones," he confesses. “And that can turn into understanding a little bit of what others are going through. Being able to understand it, and share some of it, see if maybe there's something you can do. Perhaps you can offer something, if they are in a confusing situation or moment, or feel that they do not know how to act or what to do. If someone comes to you for help, you can talk about their problem, make it a shared experience. You don't wear their shoes, but you know a little about the path they've traveled." I tell him that I would like to think that I have been there for others, but the truth is that I don't know if I have.

“We can always do more. Forever. There is a limit to that." He tilts his head, smiles. “But you can't do everything. It can not".

AFTER JOHN WICK 4 THERE WILL BE JOHN WICK 5 after Matrix Resurrections. Who knows. The Wachowski sisters, Lana and Lilly, who wrote and directed the first three, said they weren't even going to do this one (Lilly hasn't been in Resurrections). Keanu says there's no dream project right now, no favorite novel to adapt, no genre he's dying to try. "I'm just trying to have a career," he insists.

Bullock has an idea: “I would like nothing more than to do a comedy with Keanu before he dies. Just laugh with him. It's fun. We can be 75 years old; then it will be even better, something like Cocoon for older people. Playing two funny old men. A road movie. An elderly couple in a motorhome. It would be the end of Speed! We're just going to drive real slow. Pissing everyone off. That would be our movie."

Winona Ryder, who has known Keanu for 35 years and has starred with him in four movies, says it's the stories that keep her going. "He is always willing to explore unknown places, both in terms of characters and storytelling," she says. In Le Grand Colbert, I ask Keanu if he's self-conscious that I ask him those questions about why he likes him so much, and where his reputation for being kind and good-natured comes from. "Hum," he blurts out, smiling a little. "Yes. I mean: I don't think I necessarily want to be... Yeah! I dont know". He kind of pulls off a Ted Logan voice. "I'm just trying to live, man." When we lose someone, maybe that reminds us that life is short and all that. He changes his voice again, much calmer, and lowering his eyes he replies: "Yes, sure." And he insists: “Sure”. "It's a cliché, I guess," I add. He immediately looks up and contradicts me: "But it's real."

He puts on his hat and a sweatshirt, all black, and goes out into the street. He's going straight from here to meet a riding instructor. “There's a scene, knock on wood [and knock on wood], in John Wick 4, the opening sequence, where John Wick returns to the desert on horseback. Hopefully, I'll go at a very fast gallop." “And you know how to do that?” I ask him. "Well. That's why I'm going to train."

A few customers follow him out, apologize and ask for a selfie. Some do not apologize. The maitre d tries to find out how long he will be in town because he wants to introduce someone to her. Keanu responds quietly, gently, with the energy of the classic 'Sad Keanu' meme but more politely than his interlocutor has been: "Thanks, but probably not." The man seems surprised: "Why not?" "Because of time and work," replies Keanu.

He walks down the damp street, past buildings hundreds of years old, to a riding instructor, so he can finish telling this story, and then another, and then another.

Kerrie Smith Campbell (hair) Stephen Kelley (grooming) Nick Sullivan (creative director) Rockwell Harwood (design director) Justin O'Neill (visual director) Randi Peck (manager)