Keanu Reeves spent 14 years on Fox's "blacklist"
At 54 years old and after regaining his status as an action movie star thanks to the John Wick movie saga, actor Keanu Reeves no longer shakes his pulse when it comes to recalling some of the toughest or most turbulent episodes of his interpretive career. More specifically, the artist has confessed that he came to feel as if he had entered the "movie jail" when the Fox studios vetoed his participation in any of his films for no less than 14 years.
The Hollywood star, who has given a revealing interview to the new edition of GQ, attributes such severe punishment to his refusal to star in the second part of the film that catapulted him to stardom, 'Speed' (1994), in which he shared credits with Sandra Bullock. Such rejection and the difficulty of finding a substitute who was up to it would have led the multinational to put the Canadian interpreter on its particular "black list".
"I did not work with Fox again until 'Ultimatum on Earth', and all because I preferred to play 'Hamlet' in a regional theater in Winnipeg [Canada]", Reeves acknowledged in conversation with the magazine while referring to the failed remake of the 1951 film, which marked his official return to Fox's orbit and which today is rated one star out of five on the critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
The last of the aforementioned films was a resounding failure of critics and audiences, but at least it didn't win the Razzie award for the worst sequel or review of the year, as happened eleven years earlier with 'Speed 2: Cruise Control', starring the mentioned Sandra Bullock and Jason Patric, the one in charge of replacing Reeves. However, the film was very close to suffering the same fate in 2009 by winning a nomination in that category, although finally the dubious honor went to 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' (2008), the fourth.
