Keanu Reeves who has kept a low profile since the start of his career, has become a social media darling.
Host and comedian Stephen Colbert asked the actor in 2019 to close his television talk. The tone was light, they were talking about the new plot of Bill and Ted saving the universe. And yet, after taking a minute to think about his response, Reeves concluded: "What I know is that those who love us are going to miss us." And there, with that sentence, the altar of San Keanu was finished.
Thoughtful, deep, and sincere, the protagonist of The Matrix had spent decades as one of the most successful and mysterious actors in Hollywood, a guy who, although he started working as a child, never got caught up in the celebrity circuit and excesses of his contemporaries. Someone whose -scarce- statements and public appearances and beauty barely modified by the passage of time, through social networks, changed register. Patron of the arts and capable of transmitting a tenderness that is not in the toolbox of any of his colleagues, the actor was already disputing Tom Hanks for the "best person in Hollywood" podium, when it was revealed this week that he donated 70 percent of his profits for the first installment of the Wachowski saga for the investigation of leukemia, a disease that Kim, his younger sister, suffered at that time.
As published by the New York Post newspaper, of the 45 million dollars that the actor earned for playing Neo in the first installment of the science fiction saga, Reeves donated more than 30 million for cancer research and the creation of a foundation to help a children's cancer hospital. For the media in his country, the news of the amount of money delivered was as surprising as that he did it with the same discretion with which he usually conducts himself. In Hollywood, generosity can often be as profitable a publicity opportunity as a walk down the red carpet.
The fascination that Reeves aroused in the public years ago seems to have amplified in recent times thanks to social networks, whose users have fun with the figure of the actor. The little that is known about his life - the illness of his sister, the death of his daughter at birth, and that of his ex-girlfriend in a car accident a few years later - made him a tragic figure who even got his own meme. The image of the actor sitting on a bench, head down and pensive, was dubbed "Sad Keanu" (sad Keanu) and shared endlessly. A surprise for him who recently explained that at that moment what he felt was not sadness, but hunger. "I was eating a sandwich and thinking about my things," he said, again on the Colbert program, in the middle of the promotional campaign for the premiere of Matrix: Resurrections.
It is clear that, beyond his qualities and charisma, for part of the public that admires him, Reeves functions as an ideal, an avatar of his own aspirations, "the Internet boyfriend" as some have described him. His opacity makes him a blank slate for his followers to fantasize about his life, his personality, and the mystery of his eternal youth.
Curiously, for years, far from the intrigue and fascination that they now generate, these characteristics were evaluated as acting inexpressiveness. An opinion that many critics and viewers shared when seeing his performances in films such as Limit Point, Dracula, and Maximum Speed, among other of his 90s hits. But those harsh comments - about his performance in Man of Tai Chi (available on Movistar Play), the film he also directed, Variety said was a "rigid and inexpressive" performance - are in the past. The person Keanu Reeves - or whoever the public thinks he is - overcame the pitfalls that the actor Reeves experienced in his career. Perhaps because both facets seem to have merged for a long time thanks to humor. One of the best examples of that alchemy occurred in the remarkable romantic comedy Maybe Forever, available on Netflix, in which Reeves plays a ridiculous and extremely funny version of himself that stands out from the first second he appears on the screen. And the same can be said of his appearance in Toy Story 4 in which he voices Duke Caboom, an animated character as passionate about motorcycles as he is.
Between Neo and John Wick - his most recent successful action character - Reeves seems to have found roles that fit him like a glove, offering entertainment to viewers and enhancing the films that contain them. And, far from them, the possibility of starring in the miniseries The Devil In The White City -produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, and based on the book by Erik Larson set during the world fair organized in Chicago in 1893-, could complete the virtuous circle of his public life. Although, in any case, San Keanu's acolytes already have all the evidence they need to believe in him.
