All the reasons why Keanu Reeves became the emblem of the "good guy"
We will never stop loving you, Keanu. Ever and never.
"Does anyone by any chance have a list of Hollywood men who won't end up disappointing me?" I remember writing a similar Tweet last year, right at the height of the scandals related to the #MeToo movement. "Or maybe just a post-it with the name of Keanu Reeves on it?"
Trying to explain exactly why Reeves has become the undisputed symbol of the Good-Boy-Who-Will-Not-Make-You-Suffer is a very daunting task. First of all, being in the context of the film industry, it should be noted that, with "Good-Boy-Who-Won't-Make-You-Suffer", we mean a person characterized by a silent tranquility, that we couldn't even imagine screaming. on the phone, treating the waiters badly or patting the women he works with on the ass.
In recent years, Keanu has also starred in two action films that emanate bisexuality from every scene, John Wick and John Wick: Chapter 2. In the meantime, he has also dedicated himself to publishing, founding the publishing house X Artists' Books. . And then there was Destination Marriage, a 2018 romantic comedy that avoids the usual couple dynamic of a middle-aged man with a sexy girl who still goes to college, and instead stars Reeves (53) together with a ' another icon of the past decades, Winona Ryder (46). The result was one of the most significant media successes of recent times in the United States, crowned by the revelation that the two have been accidentally married for a quarter of a century.
To me, Reeves has always symbolized the happy side of Hollywood, particularly since I stumbled upon a thread on Reddit listing his seemingly endless kindnesses to colleagues, family, and complete strangers. An example?
"Of the total $ 70 million earned by The Matrix and its various sequels, Reeves has donated a whopping $ 50 million to the special effects and makeup teams."
And he said, "Money is the last thing I have to worry about. With what I've earned so far, I could live great for at least a couple of centuries." And then he gave motorbikes to stuntmen, took care of his sister during her illness, set up a charity to which he donates a large part of his earnings, loves cats and dogs, takes the subway every day and his idea. of happiness predicts "friends, family, wine, great food, good news."
"But, yes. Come on, it's not important!" he exclaimed in an interview for Esquire last year when asked to comment on that Reddit thread above. "I'm a normal type ... [But being a good guy] is a nice trait to be known for." Also because there aren't many good guys in the film industry. It is often said on Twitter, with a rather dark irony, that the only category of people who age well are white men. Yet for a 53-year-old man of Chinese, English, Irish, Portuguese and Hawaiian descent, born in Beirut and raised in Canada, Reeves is getting old. So great that someone suspects is immortal.
In Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon (2016), Reeves plays a motel-owner rapist. In one scene of her, her character forces a young girl (Elle Fanning) to give him oral sex by threatening her with a knife. Rumor has it that on the set, Reeves was terrified. "The knife was rubber," the actress recalled to New York Magazine, "but he was shaking anyway! He kept asking me if I was comfortable, if everything was okay. He's the most polite guy I know. He's so sweet."
His kindness is so well established within pop culture that around the time Harvey Weinstein had started circulating a fake New York Times article that headlined: "Keanu Reeves accused by several women of taking them out to dinner." Memorizing is so easy because he doesn't really care about being memified. Among these, we remember the Sad Keanu meme, the Happy Keanu one and finally the Tai Chi Keanu. And while he would rather not look so sad in that photo taken by the paparazzi, Reeves is still convinced that the Sad Keanu meme is "funny, innocent and accurate."
"Of course, the fact that he is a queer icon only flatters him, as does Diane Keaton's declared love for her."
Ask any woman: despite Jack Nicholson's blatant upper middle class membership in Anything Can Happen, no one would ever choose him over Reeves, come on. Are these reasons enough to declare Keanu reeves the quintessential Good Guy? In our opinion, yes, but there is another one.
Unlike what some film critics claim, Keanu Reeves knows how to act. "Keanu's prowess does not lie in his chameleon skills or in his ability to recite long monologues," writes academician Angelica Jade Bastién. "Keanu demonstrates his acting skills in detail, when he with a little grimace he sums up the whole character he is playing. For Keanu, acting is not a way to become someone else, but a way of being." In other words: his real talent is to always be himself, always relaxed, kind and never exaggerated. And if that's not the definition of a Nice Guy, then I really don't know what that is.
