Keanu Reeves Biography

Keanu Charles Reeves was born on September 2, 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon to an Asian American of Chinese and Hawaiian descent geologist Samuel Nowlin Reeves and an English showgirl Patricia. Keanu is actually a very unique name, it's spelled "Key-ah-nu" which in Hawaiian means "cool breeze over the mountains." There was a move to Australia for a year where Keanu's first sister Kim was born in 1966, which soon followed by his parents dissolution. Subsequent to their marriage dissolved, Patric and Samuel went their separate ways, in which she and the two kids headed to New York City, while Samuel to Hawaii. Since that time Keanu visited his father in Hawaii on occasion until he was thirteen, the time he saw him for the very last time. And in the year of 1994 it was reported that Samuel was sentenced to ten years in prison for selling heroin at Hilo Airport in 1992. He was paroled in the mid-1996, but both father and son were no longer maintaining contact with each other.

Soon after their move to New York, Patric met and married director Paul Aaron and moved to Toronto, where both took up Canadian citizenship. Less than a year later they split up and Patric went on to marry rock promoter Robert Miller and gave birth to Keanu's second half sister, Karina, in 1976. Switched partners a few times more, Patric for one more time got divorced and married her third husband Robert Miller, a hair salon owner, whom she divorced with in 1994. Facing such verity, Keanu later on tend to describe himself as a "middle-class white boy. A bourgeois, middle-class white boy with an absent father, a strong-willed mother, and two beautiful younger sisters."

Enrolled at the Jesse Ketchum Public School in Toronto from kindergarten through the eighth grade, Keanu went on to four different high schools including De La Salle College and the Toronto School for the Performing Arts before at the end dropping out completely at age 17 to pursue his acting career. In high school he wasn't so enthusiastic about academics, rather he took a keen interest in ice hockey that he was named "The Wall" goalie by his high school hockey team. Besides becoming an avid hockey player he was also interested in drama. And he maybe a hardworker too, as during his youth he took on lots of different jobs, including sharpening skates at an ice rink shop, landscaping, and making pasta. Yet, Keanu could in the future be a famous Hollywood film actor.

As faith would have it, Keanu soon then appeared in some stage gigs and bit parts on TV movies. After all he could favorably win a supporting role in the Rob Lowe hockey flick "Youngblood" (1986), which was filmed in Canada. Shortly after the production completed, Keanu moved to Hollywood, where he burst on critics' radar with his performance in the dark adolescent drama "River's Edge" (1986). The star eventually gained his very first popularity for the role of totally rad dude Ted Logan he played in the 1989 film "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure." Sad to relate that the role had, in many ways, influenced Keanu's following portrayal in some other different movies. In order to rub off such stigma, in the next few years he forced himself to get involved in a series of highbrow projects. Firstly played a slumming rich boy opposite River Phoenix's narcoleptic male hustler in "My Own Private Idaho" (1991), Keanu went on to play an unlucky lawyer who stumbles into the vampire's lair in "Dracula" (1992) and Shakespearean party-pooper Don Jon in "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993).

Despite the fact that his acting has frequently been ridiculed as wooden, Keanu indeed able to be a major box-office draw and several of his films have equally become extremely popular. It was in 1994 when he became a big-budget action star with the release of "Speed" (1994). This was just the beginning of the start before he would in the following years alternate in such films, as "Feeling Minnesota" (1996), "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (1997), "Johnny Mnemonic" (1995), and "Chain Reaction" (1996). A few years after he drooped the "Speed" sequel, Keanu hit the box office with the Wachowski brothers' cyberadventure "The Matrix" (1999). Strengthen his role as Neo in that movie, he kept playing in its two sequels, "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions", both box-office hits. That achievement has, in fact, granted this left-handed actor a Star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, which he proudly received on January 31, 2005.

In December of 1999, amidst the people's joy in celebrating Christmas, Keanu had to face a sad occurence as his actress girlfriend Jennifer Syme gave birth to their stillborn daughter they planned to name Eva Archer Syme-Reeves. As if the sorrow was not hurting enough, Syme later got into a damaged car accident happened on April 2, 2001and was killed at once after her Jeep Cherokee careered onto the wrong side of a Los Angeles road near Highway 101 and smashed into three parked cars. She was then buried next to their daughter in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. What a deep mourning for Keanu Reeves.

Independent Keanu, who is reported to be very generous with his time and money, once began playing bass with the rock band Dogstar, who has now gone "into hibernation." And he currently reported playing bass in a band called "becky" with former Dogstar drummer Rob Mailhouse, guitarist Paulie Kosta and singer Rebecca Lord. Yet, in the latest interview, he has announced he's been leaving the band and his musical career for good. Keeping his 1974 motorcycle among his most prized possessions, Keanu loves horseback riding and surfing, which both inspired from his movie roles. Maintaining Canadian citizenship and passport, he is now reside in Toronto, Canada where he originally grown up.

Being able to put full concentration on his acting career, Keanu smoothly moved forward to compile a diverse film resume which included "Something's Gotta Give" (2003), "Thumbsucker" (2005), "Constantine" (2005), and "A Scanner Darkly" (2006). The same year of the latter's release also saw him reunite with "Speed" co-star Sandra Bullock in romantic drama "The Lake House" before joining the star-studded cast of "Night Watch (2008)", the second feature directorial effort of noted screenwriter David Ayer.