Agents once told Keanu Reeves his first name was too ethnic
Born in Beirut, raised mostly in Toronto and expelled from an arts school, Keanu Reeves briefly auditioned as K. C. or Casey after agents objected to his Hawaiian first name. He went back to Keanu, and it became one of the most recognisable names in action cinema.
Reeves was born on September 2, 1964, to an English mother from Essex, who worked as a costume designer and performer, and an American father from Hawaii of Native Hawaiian, Chinese, English and Portuguese descent. His parents split in 1966. The family moved from Beirut to Sydney, then New York, then Toronto, where he grew up largely in Yorkville with a nanny, British comedy on the television and Chinese furniture and cooking inherited from his grandmother's side. He last saw his father on Kaua'i at thirteen.
School went badly. He attended four high schools, was thrown out of the Etobicoke School of the Arts for being, in his words, too rambunctious, and has said dyslexia made him a poor student. He was a strong ice hockey goalkeeper at De La Salle College and dreamed of the Canadian Olympic team until injury ended that path. At fifteen he settled on acting, and at seventeen he left school altogether, later moving to Los Angeles on a green card obtained through an American stepfather. He remains solely a Canadian citizen.
The early work was scrappy: a Coca-Cola advert in 1983, a youth reporting job for the CBC, Mercutio on a North York stage in 1985 and a goalkeeper role in his first feature, Youngblood. The time-travel comedy Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure made him famous in 1989, and Speed later sealed his status as an action lead. Playing Neo in The Matrix brought greater stardom still, and until 2016 no actor had been paid more for a single production than he was for its two 2003 sequels.
After a commercial lull, the John Wick series from 2014 revived his career. Outside film he plays in the band Dogstar, co-created the BRZRKR comic franchise and co-founded ARCH Motorcycle. In 2020 The New York Times ranked him the fourth-greatest actor of the century so far, and in 2022 Time listed him among the 100 most influential people.
Source: Keanu Reeves
