by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
No fate is bad enough to let it get you down. And wealth obliges. The actor Keanu Reeves stands for both maxims in a way that is as credible as it is admirable. Do you miss role models? Here is one.
He was three when his father left him. He grew up with three different stepfathers – it never took more than four years until the next divorce. By the time he was fourteen, his mother’s erratic life had brought him three big moves: from Beirut to Sydney to New York and from there to Toronto. He attended four different high schools and was expelled from one because of poor discipline. He suffers from dyslexia. Nothing came of his childhood dream of becoming an ice hockey player. He dropped out of school at seventeen to become an actor, But instead of shining on the stage, he made a living as an ice skate sharpener, cook, gardener, and manager of a pasta shop.
When he finally landed his first roles, many critics failed him – they described his performances as wooden and inexpressive.
His daughter was stillborn four weeks before her due date; the mother died in a car accident 14 months later.
His best friend died of a drug overdose at the age of 23. It took him years to come to terms with this loss.
His younger sister suffered from leukemia.
All of this could have made Keanu Reeves despair. Let yourself go. Despair of the evil world, struggle with unjust fate.
To despair?
But he didn’t let it get him down. He persistently sought engagements. Finally, the Toronto Municipal Theater offered him the chance to gain stage experience. At 22, he left his Canadian homeland with $3,000, an old Volvo, and the address of his first stepfather, a director. This was followed by her first television and cinema appearances in low-budget productions. He made his breakthrough in Hollywood in 1989 with the science fiction comedy “Bill & Ted’s Crazy Journey Through Time,” in the role of the goofy, lazy teenager Ted. The 1994 blockbuster “Speed” made him world-famous as a daring police officer alongside Sandra Bullock. From then on, he received salaries in the millions.
The role of computer hacker Neo in the four Oscar-winning “Matrix” trilogy, 1999 to 2003, made Keanu Reeves one of the highest-paid film stars on the planet. He was also praised by the trade press and enthusiastically celebrated by fans as the contract killer John Wick in the four-part film series of the same name and as a family man in the erotic thriller “Knock Knock.” In 2020, The New York Times ranked him fourth on its list of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century.
At the beginning of 2005, Reeves received star number 2277 on the most famous sidewalk in the film world, Hollywood Boulevard, the “Walk of Fame.” In 2021, an asteroid was named after him: “Keanureeves.” It has also served as a namesake in biology. Since 2023, “Keanumycin” has been the name of a chemical compound that was isolated from representatives of the bacterial genus Pseudomonas and is deadly to fungi.
Keanu Reeves’s breathtaking career could have gotten to his head long ago. He could squander his absurd wealth pointlessly. Someone like him could afford anything. Your own Caribbean island with a huge villa on it. A swanky yacht. Bodyguards and house staff in troop strength. He could fill his garage with luxury sleighs. Head to every high society event, no matter how distant, in a private jet. His net worth is estimated at $380 million. “I could live for the next few centuries on what I’ve already earned,” he says.
“Money is the last thing on my mind.”
But “money is the last thing on my mind.” Attitudes are alien and repugnant to Keanu Reeves. Instead, he chose a humble, down-to-earth life centered around something unbuyable. Something that has no price but infinite value: being a good person.
This often only shows up in small gestures of humanity. Early one morning in 1997, paparazzi found him walking for a few hours in the company of a homeless man in Los Angeles, sharing food with him, listening to him, and being involved in his life. On September 2, 2010, his 46th birthday, Keanu Reeves bought a brioche from a bakery, put a candle on it, and ate it outside the store. When passers-by stopped to talk to him, he offered them coffee.
Pouring out a few cups of coffee probably didn’t cost him more than ten or twenty dollars. However, his spontaneous donation to the background actors in the “Matrix” production who provided costumes and special effects – “the real heroes of the trilogy,” as he called them – amounted to more than $50 million. He gave each Stunt (Wo)Man from “The Matrix Reloaded” a $15,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which, when added up, was worth another million dollars to him. All 800 people on set received an expensive bottle of champagne from him – the total bill for this was $50,000. He gave $20,000 as a Christmas present to a set builder whose financial problems he had learned about. For several successful films, Reeves gave up to 90 percent of his fee so that the producers could hire more stars. Al Pacino was only able to take part in the mystery thriller “The Devils’s Advocate” after Reeves gave the producers two million dollars for it.
The fight for the survival of his sister Kim, who was suffering from leukemia, motivated Reeves to set up his own cancer foundation that supports children’s hospitals and research. (1) Keanu Reeves has spent $80 million on this so far – this amount corresponds to 70 percent of his “Matrix” gage. But “I don’t like having my name attached to it; I just let the foundation do what it does,” Reeves told Ladies Home Journal in 2009.
In addition, Reeves donates to SCORE (Spinal Cord Opportunities for Rehabilitation Endowment), a charity that supports hockey players with spinal injuries.
Sick children are particularly important to Keanu. He gave millions of dollars to the Canadian SickKids Foundation, among others, to build a state-of-the-art hospital that will research new healing methods and offer optimal care to small patients. Reeves is said to have planned to raise $1.5 billion for SickKids.
Keanu Reeves also supports animal rights. He repeatedly emphasizes how much he loves animals – and how much they deserve to be treated kindly. That’s why he donated over a million dollars to the animal protection organization PETA.
He prefers to help in silence.
With all of this, he doesn’t want to be a celebrated do-gooder who aims to receive the loudest possible applause for demonstrative acts of charity. He doesn’t hire reporters and camera crews to publicize his charitable gestures. Time magazine describes him as “Hollywood’s ultimate introvert,” a “terribly shy” workaholic, and “inscrutable”: “As one of the richest people in a city where fame and money are the most important natural resources, he could also be one of the loneliest be?” (2)
Some fans exaggerate their adoration:
Mural in Santiago de Chile
His manager and producer Erwin Stoff, who has known Reeves since he was 13, is still puzzling about him: “He has perfected a way for himself to stay away from people.” Keanu Reeves doesn’t like being interviewed because, for him, it amounts to “having to talk to strangers about my private life.” “I’m not interested in showing anyone what’s behind the curtain. I like watching a good documentary about how something was done – I just don’t want it to be my life.” When he sees a mural in Santiago de Chile that transfigures him into the second Jesus (see above), his hair is likely to stand on end. He prefers to help in silence. He does this because it feels good and right to him.
How Keanu Reeves lives is how he writes. His book Ode to Happiness (2012), currently only available for the crazy price of 198 euros or 944.67 euros (as of February 13, 2024), is not biographical self-congratulation – it is intended to convey undogmatic wisdom that makes you think. The author explains how you can deal with difficult life circumstances – and not take everything so seriously. Reeves also has a melancholic inner dialogue that he subtly pokes fun at. (3)
Although he does not belong to any religion, he describes himself as “very spiritual” and is drawn to Buddhism. “Most of the things I got from Buddhism are human in nature – understanding feelings, impermanence, as well as trying to understand other people and where they come from.” (4)
The name Keanu comes from Hawaiian (ke anu); it means “the cool one,” – which means it doesn’t fit at all with the warmth of its most prominent bearer. It is generous, empathetic people like Keanu Reeves who make it possible for my Ways Out Foundation/Charity to help.
(Harald Wiesendanger)
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Remarks
1 https://www.buzzfeed.at/buzz/popkultur/wick-keanu-reeves-bester-mensch-charity-leukaemie-matrix-john-91215993.html , aufgerufen am 13. Februar 2024; https://www.gala.de/stars/news/keanu-reeves–er-spendet-hohe-gagensumme-fuer-schicksal-seiner-schwester-22577074.html , aufgerufen am 13. Februar 2024
2 Lev Grossman: “Keanu Reeves: The Man Who Isn’t There”. Time 14.2.2005, abgerufen am 13.2.2024.
3 Im Jahr 2016 folgte Shadows. Darin philosophiert Reeves über das Wesen des Schattens – als projizierte Figur, aber auch als Metapher für die dunklen, unbewussten Abgründe eines Menschen, in denen er Geheimnisse verbirgt oder verdrängt.
4 “Keanu Reeves on the small screen.” Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, Mandala Publications. Juni 2001.
Photo credit
Cover photo:Collage aus Porträtfoto Keanu_Reeves_2013_(10615146086)_(cropped)By Anna Hanks from Austin, Texas, USA – Keanu Reeves & Tiger Chen & Tim League, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83644147 + Foto krebskrankes Kind (Freepik).
Im Text: Collage aus Porträtfoto Reeves (By Governo do Estado de São Paulo – Reunião com o ator norte-americano Keanu Reeves, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83910220) und dem Foto eines Wandgemäldes von Keanu Reeves in Santiago de Chile (By Carlos Teixidor Cadenas – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114124986)