KEANU REEVES was revealed in the fall of 1998 as a drug addict. At least, that was the conclusion of many members of the press upon his reappearance in Los Angeles, after the gruelling seven-month shoot for The Matrix. Gaunt, haggard, with a shaven head and no eyebrows, Keanu had disturbed fans at Dogstar gigs in L.A. who thought the actor looked extremely unwell. A few more sightings around town were enough to bring the story of his ‘illness’ to the attention of the press. Keanu ignored the speculation through September and into October, but finally decided he had to set the record straight.
‘He’s as fit as a fiddle,’ said his publicist, Robert Garlock, in response to the drug rumours that appeared in magazine and internet gossip. ‘Keanu has lost some weight and shaved his hair for a new movie called The Matrix. Reports of him being ill are totally false. He is in good health.’ Keanu himself reflected aloud on the storm of rumours that had blown up over the years. ‘I’m either on drugs or I’m gay or married to record boss David Geffen. None of it’s true . . . All this [gay] gossip only started because I was rarely seen out on the town with a woman.’
But denials weren’t enough for those who continued to peddle the drug and/or illness angles online. Keanu had to live down his past – particularly the fact that he’d co-starred with the late River Phoenix on My Own Private Idaho and dabbled in drugs during the making of that movie, alongside most of the cast and crew. One newspaper even reported an entirely untrue story that his friends had staged an ‘intervention’ to save the star. By November, Keanu was spotted in Golds Gym in Venice, California with a female trainer, as he attempted to pile on those moviestar muscles once more . . .
Worried as to whether The Matrix could compete with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace during the summer of 1999, Warner Bros. arranged a series of test screenings during January and February. Unaware of the high scores the film was generating with preview audiences, Keanu was looking for a new role to tackle. He was worried, too, that The Matrix might go the same way as Johnny Mnemonic, his previous effort at a sci-fi blockbuster. As the antidote to his fears, he was looking for something decidedly more gritty and realistic. Having previously researched the role of a homeless man by hanging out with down-and-outs, Keanu could draw upon his Dogstar experience for the role of a rock star in Great Jones Street: a proposed $6 million movie of the Don DeLillo novel directed by Stephen Kay, for whom Keanu had previously featured in The Last Time I Committed Suicide. Scheduled for production in Keanu’s old stomping ground of Toronto, standing in for lower Manhattan, in August 1999 the project stalled.
As his search for an appropriate new acting role went on, more personal matters came to occupy Keanu. His sister, Kim, had now been battling cancer of the lymph glands for over ten years. While the disease remained in remission, Keanu took the opportunity to spend time alone with her. After sunbathing and boating in Tahiti, Keanu was able to return to Los Angeles looking a lot healthier than on his return from Australia. ‘She’s so very brave and I want the very best for her,’ said Keanu of 36-year-old Kim. ‘You can star in hit movies, but that’s nothing compared to going through what Kim’s been through.’ While Keanu was enjoying his time with Kim, however, it couldn’t have occurred to the actor that he was about to enter the most tragic two-year period of his life.
By March, Keanu had finally signed up for a new movie that looked as if it was going to get made. Based on the 1987 National Football League (NFL) players strike and the fortunes of a replacement team of ‘scab’ players, The Replacements would star Keanu as the team’s leader. During the strike, league players were replaced by previously underachieving hopefuls. However, the Washington Redskins replacement team went on to enjoy an amazing winning streak. The screenplay, which attracted Keanu to the film, was written by Vince McKewin, previously known for the kids’ film Fly Away Home. Warner Bros., enthused by the positive advance reaction to The Matrix, were determined to sign up the movie’s star for another film.
Before filming could begin, however, Keanu had to fulfil a mini-tour of India with Dogstar that he hoped would soak up a little of that country’s culture: ‘We definitely want to bond with Indian music, both classical and contemporary . . . ’ After five days in India, Keanu flew back to LA to attend the premiere of The Matrix, with his sister and a soon-to-be- significant mystery guest in tow, on 24 March at Mann’s Village Theatre in Westwood.
The Matrix would go on to become one of the most significant hits of 1999, but it was greeted with mixed reviews. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times dubbed the movie ‘a visually dazzling cyber-adventure, full of kinetic excitement. It’s fun, but it could have been more.’ While Ebert found the stunts and effects thrilling, he felt the lead performance was somewhat lacking. ‘Keanu Reeves goes for the impassive Harrison Ford approach, “acting” as little as possible . . . ’ A more analytical Philip Strick in Sight and Sound thought Keanu was right for the role: ‘With a certain gloomy helplessness, Neo gives a good impression of being incapable of original thought.’ For Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, The Matrix was ‘a wildly cinematic futuristic thriller, determined to overpower the imagination, combining traditional science fiction premises with new visual technology in a way that defies description . . . The Matrix is the unlikely spiritual love child of dark futurist Philip K. Dick and the snap and dazzle of Hong Kong filmmaking . . . ’ For Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers The Matrix was ‘a futuristic kung-fu fantasy with terrific stunts and a stunted script, [featuring] Keanu Reeves as a pawn in a giant virtual-reality game. Damned if I can explain more about this muddled mind-bender. The Matrix soars with its feet in the air . . . ’
The audience made their voices heard at the box office. The Matrix set a new record for an Easter holiday weekend, totalling $37.4 million. Part of its early success was due to the mystique surrounding the film, promoted by the whatisthematrix.com website. Within six weeks of release, The Matrix had taken over $138.5 million at the US box office. Thirteen weeks in the top ten took the US box office takings to just under $167 million, or a total of $270 million world-wide when overseas earnings were added. Apart from its commercial success, the film also ranked high on many critics’ ‘best films of the year’ lists.
The box office success of The Matrix was so overwhelming that sequels became inevitable. ‘They [co-writers/directors the Wachowskis] came to us originally with a spec script and when we bought it, they informed us that it was part of a trilogy,’ said Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, then president of worldwide theatrical productions at Warner Bros. ‘At the time, we thought to ourselves that these are really bold guys and everything we’ve seen since that time proves that their original vision was right on target.’
‘We could do a prequel and a sequel to this episode,’ confirmed Andy Wachowski, ‘or two prequels or two sequels. The story and characters lend themselves to any number of permutations and combinations.’ When initially promoting The Matrix, Keanu said he’d ‘love to return to the character as long as the new script was as well constructed as this one.’
By April 1999, with The Matrix on release, The Replacements had secured a director: Howard Deutch, who’d helmed unnecessary comedy sequels The Odd Couple II and Grumpier Old Men, as well as 1980s teen classic Pretty in Pink. Preproduction began in earnest and shooting was set for late summer. Gene Hackman and Orlando Jones were added to the cast, with Hackman as a football coach lured out of retirement, as the search went on for a host of physically fit actors to play the Washington Redskins. However, the NFL decided to not support the movie and refused to allow the use of the trademarked team name Redskins, forcing the producers to call their team the Washington Sentinels.
For Deutch, there was a universality in the second-raters who unexpectedly rose to the occasion. ‘It’s the story of a group of people who don’t really believe in themselves,’ he noted. Producer Dylan Sellers recognised the heart of the story: ‘So many of the replacement players wound up excelling on the field. They were recruited from their jobs in convenience stores, factories and gas stations to play professional football. It’s a classic story, a bunch of ordinary guys who for a brief moment of time get a second opportunity.’
While based on actual events, the film had to be largely fictitionalised due to the NFL objections, allowing Keanu greater freedom in the role of Shane Falco, the failed former quarterback who leads the players. ‘Keanu is an actor who is hugely popular because although he’s very attractive, he’s also an everyman,’ said Deutch. ‘This seems to be a quality that’s very difficult for a lot of actors to achieve. Although with films like Speed and The Matrix Keanu projected a superhuman figure, he also retained his essential humanity. In fact, Keanu plays vulnerability with absolute emotional honesty.’
To the great relief of Deutch and Sellers, Keanu had retained a high level of physical fitness from his training for The Matrix, an athleticism that complimented his approach to the character. ‘Keanu loved the character of Shane Falco,’ noted Sellers. ‘When we met, it was so clear that having read the script just once, Keanu totally had the character of Shane Falco nailed. He completely embodied the spirit of Shane. He was funny, self-effacing, yet charismatic enough so that we would believe that the whole team would follow him all the way to the endzone.’
Taking over from striking players has its downside, as Keanu discovers in The Replacements.
Keanu, for his part, felt his character had a different but equal complexity to the role of Neo in The Matrix. ‘That had a lot of content and relationships, as opposed to just being spectacle, and I felt the same way about The Replacements. As an actor, you want to instil your character with a real life. You have to do your interior work as well as the physical work to fully play these parts.’
Veteran actor Hackman was attracted to his role as much by his co-star as by the character. ‘I like football, I loved the idea of playing a coach, and I was excited by the idea of working with Keanu,’ he said. ‘Most important, [Coach] Jimmy McGinty was an interesting enough character to make me want to bring him alive. Here’s a man who has been given a second chance, like the players.’
Chosen to portray head cheerleader Annabelle Farrell, Keanu’s love interest in the film, was Brooke Langton. Several fresh talents were recruited to play the team members, among them stand-up comedian Faizon Love and former pro player Michael ‘Bear’ Taliferro, while the character of Welsh kicker Nigel Gruff changed completely from script to screen when Deutch and Sellers decided to call upon Notting Hill’s Rhys Ifans.
As with The Matrix, Keanu and his team members had to undergo extensive training. Football coordinator Allan Graf and his associate Mark Ellis, who’d coached the actors on Oliver Stone’s football movie Any Given Sunday, were given the task of recruiting core players to integrate with Keanu and the rest of the actors during a three-week training camp.
Executive producer Jeffrey Chernov recalled, ‘Keanu was already working with a number of people to condition himself and work on his football. We wanted the team to not only look good, but understand the game. Essentially, we put them through a crash course in football, with intense physical training as well as rehearsing [field] plays. By the time we started shooting, they were ready to rumble.’
Each actor had his own level of athletic proficiency at the start of camp. ‘Keanu is a real good athlete, and worked long and hard on looking like a real quarterback,’ noted Graf. ‘Keanu has an athletic background, so he came into this ahead,’ agreed former pro footballer T. J. Rubley. ‘He also really loves to study the game and did a ton of research before he even came to camp. We worked about two hours a day in camp, going through individual drills and working on fundamentals. He was already able to do a lot of things with his body and his feet. All we had to do was to incorporate that into throwing a football.’
Shooting began in Baltimore, doubling for Washington DC 35 miles to the north, at PSINet Stadium, home of the Baltimore Ravens. It was the first time that a football movie was shot in an NFL stadium during an actual season. But with only one game a week played at the stadium, the film-makers were allowed free reign. Two weeks into principal photography, however, one scene was filmed during an actual game. On 28 August 1999, spectators had their sport interrupted as Keanu and his co-stars took the field to capture a series of plays in front of a genuine football crowd. ‘It was the biggest high any of us have ever had,’ enthused Graf of that evening. ‘Even Keanu said that it was one of his greatest moments, going out there with a crowd that big, shouting encouragement.’
Working with older actors like Gene Hackman, in The Replacements, proved to be a learning experience for Keanu.
The shoot ran through August to October, taking in a visit from Hurricane Floyd in mid-September, which sent cast and crew into the depths of PSINet Stadium to shoot interior scenes on the locker-room set. For approximately two weeks, the field at PSINet was occupied 24 hours a day by The Replacements, with first-unit shooting by day and the second unit taking over at sunset.
The entire company – and particularly his fellow Sentinels teammates, both actors and real players – were astonished at Keanu’s development as a quarterback. Initially gaining 23 pounds for the role, he could throw a ball about fifteen yards when he first came to training camp. By the midway point of production, he was firing balls some 50 or 60 yards downfield. ‘Keanu is very intense, and really wants to be good,’ observed Graf. ‘He just constantly practices. Between scenes, he’s always throwing the ball around with the other players, running or exercising. He never stops.’
‘Keanu is awesome,’ stated co-star Brooke Langton. ‘He can throw and he takes all his hits. There was a moment during one of the games when he’s supposed to dodge a guy on the other team, but the other player got really excited and actually took Keanu down. That can knock the breath out of you, or even break a few bones. But Keanu jumped right back up and was ready to do it again.’ ‘Keanu can really throw the ball down half the field,’ observed fellow co-star Orlando Jones. ‘He’s not throwing it wobbly either. He’s throwing beautiful spirals.’
But the main plus point for Keanu was working with veteran co-star Hackman: ‘I got to act with Gene Hackman on my birthday, which was one of the best things that ever happened to me.’ According to Hackman, the feeling was mutual: ‘I like working with young actors, and Keanu’s become one of the best. Keanu is hardworking, highly professional and always prepared.’ It was a sharp contrast to the rumours of animosity between Al Pacino and Keanu on Devil’s Advocate.
Upon release in mid-August 2000, The Replacements bowed in at number four in the Variety top ten, grossing just over $11 million. But negative reviews reflected how Warner Bros. had misguidedly sold the film as a comedy rather than a drama. ‘The movie just wants to be loved,’ Elvis Mitchell wrote in the New York Times. ‘Is that so wrong? Well, yes, given that The Replacements is a desperate, broad comedy.’ Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer also gave the film a so-so notice: ‘Harmless, mindless and shameless, this football inspirational starring that most luscious, and laid-back, of action heroes might best be called Pretty in Pigskin,’ she wrote. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times concluded, ‘It’s like a standard sports movie, but with every point made twice or three times – as if we’d never seen one before. And the musical score provides such painstaking instructions about how to feel during every scene, it’s like the booklet that tells you how to unpack your computer.’ Jamie Bernard in the New York Daily News also felt the movie fumbled badly, dismissing it as ‘an idiotic film about a sorry bunch of scab players’.
Rumours of a relationship between Keanu and his Matrix co-star, Carrie-Anne Moss, had been rampant since filming of the sci-fi hit concluded in Australia. Upon his return to L.A., throughout the shooting of The Replacements Keanu was linked with a mysterious redhead known to the press only as ‘Jenny’.
The Sunday Times reported the traditional anonymous ‘insider’: ‘Keanu is not yet ready to give up dating other women. He just loves being around beautiful women. He likes them young, leggy and model-thin. Moss will have a tough time taming him. He is a real ladies’ man.’
Despite his reluctance, Keanu stuck to his commitment to The Watcher and gave the lacklustre movie his all.
The papers eventually named the mystery redhead as Jennifer Syme, 28, a Hollywood insider who’d worked for music-business celebrities like Marilyn Manson, as an assistant to director David Lynch, and appeared in his film Lost Highway as ‘junkie girl’. Syme had attended the Matrix premiere with Keanu, but, while he walked up the red carpet with his sister, she sneaked in the back way and met him at their seats.
Rumours of impending marriage were soon in the air, but both she and Keanu seemed to shy away from any formal commitment. Still living out of various hotels, Keanu was looking into buying himself a home, but Syme continued to maintain her own apartment in L.A.
But the relationship seemed to be going well, with Keanu and Syme sharing a sense of humour and a love of fast motorbikes. In fact, by July 1999 the press began printing the rumour that Jennifer was pregnant and Keanu was to be a father. ‘Since his girlfriend told him the news, Keanu is the happiest man alive!’ claimed that bastion of objective reporting, the National Enquirer. ‘He walks up to anyone and everyone he sees and tells them he’s going to be a daddy. He’s making a conscious effort to stop living life in the fast lane. He wants to be a good father and knows he can’t do that if he’s at the clubs every night. Keanu told me that he has no immediate plans to marry. But with or without marriage, he’ll provide anything his child needs. Right now he’s seeking parenting advice from friends and family.’
Differing reports described Keanu as conflicted, reputedly becoming distant from Syme as he contemplated the forthcoming change to his life. Pseudonymous online gossip columnist ‘Ted Casablanca’, a longtime thorn in Keanu’s side, first broke the news of the pregnancy and reported it as ‘an accident’, claiming Keanu was about to break off the relationship with Jennifer when she told him she was pregnant. While as intensely private as ever, Keanu and his PR agents were eventually forced to confirm his impending fatherhood. But events were to conspire tragically to ensure the situation remained in public view.
Seven weeks before the baby’s due date of 8 January 2000, a name was announced: Ava Archer Syme-Reeves. While mother-to-be Jennifer was spotted shopping for baby clothes with her mother, Keanu was said to have put her up in a ‘safe house’ he’d bought and visited only after dark in an elaborate attempt to protect his privacy.
‘I’m thrilled that she’s a she. I’ll make a great daddy to a little girl,’ Keanu told Now magazine. ‘I worry every day about everything. I want everything to go just perfect and I keep thinking that there are all of these things I should do to help her along, but I know that, really, there isn’t anything I can do – it’s so exasperating. I want to be part of their life. I know what its like to grow up without a father and wouldn’t ever do that to my child.’ However, his own childhood experiences had also put matrimony out of the question. ‘I saw nothing there to recommend marriage to me.’
The story behind Keanu Reeves’ next movie is a strange one: he was drawn into The Watcher (originally entitled Drive) by an allegedly fraudulent act. He filmed his role as a serial killer hunted by detective James Spader very quickly in the fall of 1999, in Chicago, but then refused to talk about or publicise the movie.
All was not to become clear until more than a year later, when Keanu finally broke his enforced silence. The first signs that all was not well had come with Keanu’s annoyance about changes in his character’s role. He’d waived his usual $15 million fee for the film, accepting payment to scale, the actor’s union minimum, for what was to be a cameo role. Once committed to the movie, however, Keanu found that not only had his role been expanded from the original script to become a main character, but that his co-stars Spader and Marisa Tomei were being paid $1.5 million more than he was. ‘The script did change,’ said director Joe Charbanic, an old hockey pal of Keanu’s. ‘It got bigger than [Keanu] wanted. He wanted it to be a little boutique film. I think we were both a little mad at each other. Every time friends of mine get in business together, it doesn’t go well. And I went in a little naive, because it was my first film . . . ’
An anonymous Hollywood source reported how ‘Keanu tried to get out of the project but his legal advisers claimed he’d face an uphill battle to do so. He’s very upset at being treated this way. And he’s already told them not to publicise the film.’ There was a suggestion that the distributor, Universal, would offer Keanu a share of the profits from The Watcher to keep the star happy.
However, it soon emerged that he’d never wanted to do the movie in the first place, and claimed he’d effectively been tricked into his obligation to play the character. Legally prevented from talking about the circumstances under which he made the film, it wasn’t until September 2001 that Keanu could come clean. ‘I never found that script interesting,’ he said, ‘but a friend of mine forged my signature on an agreement. I couldn’t prove he did and I didn’t want to get sued for not honouring the contract, so I had no other choice but to do the film.’
Made as an independent film, The Watcher was the brain child of screenwriter David Elliot. According to Charbanic’s version of events, Keanu agreed almost a decade before to feature in his first movie and had signed an agreement – during a street-hockey game in Santa Monica – to that effect without consulting his agents. Now, Charbanic saw an opportunity to cast Keanu Reeves against type, as the villain of the piece who turns the tables on the investigator who pursues him. ‘I’m this guy, who’s like a stylish serial killer – homicidal in Armani and shades,’ Keanu explained. ‘But I believe that to win audience sympathy, a character in any story has to make some kind of journey into darkness. And I like stories where even the most malevolent characters – I mean dudes burning in hell kind of guys – have sides that draw sympathy.’
While Keanu wanted to play a sympathetic bad guy, supporting actor Ernie Hudson had serious doubts about his ability to play evil at all because he was so ‘nice’. ‘At first I thought that I didn’t know if Keanu could do it,’ said Hudson. ‘But after some time on set I realised he would be just fine. He is very convincing because he is like all those guys on the news. People think they are really nice and people trust him and they have no idea how deadly this guy is until it is too late.’
Location filming wrapped within a month, on 16 December 1999, with James Spader, Jennifer McShane and Marisa Tomei partying at the Tequila Roadhouse wrap party. Keanu was notably absent.
He probably hoped he’d seen the last of Drive/The Watcher, but Universal picked up the distribution rights after the screening of a promo reel at the American Film Market in February 2000. The film was still in post-production, and the independent producers needed a distribution sale to finish it and ensure it saw the light of day. It would also ensure that the film came back to haunt Keanu.
Released wide in mid-September 2000, The Watcher benefited from a quiet release schedule, debuting at number one on the top ten but with a box office gross of only $9.1 million (less than The Replacements, which came in at number four). That the film did so well was a testament to Keanu’s pulling power, even with no promotion by the reluctant star and a series of bad reviews. ‘The acting is terrible,’ claimed ABCNews.com. ‘After The Matrix, we somehow imagined Keanu Reeves had taken his skill to another level. But The Watcher reminds us that Pinocchio is less wooden.’ The Los Angeles Times claimed, ‘The Watcher is a meticulously crafted but resolutely routine serial killer suspense thriller . . . neither acutely suspenseful nor particularly thrilling but instead mainly numbing,’ while the New York Post noted it was, ‘A crass mechanical attempt at a thriller that should have gone straight to video.’ Daily Variety at least allowed, ‘Reeves deserves credit for tackling an offbeat role, but his performance seldom rises above the level of a good try.’
After wrapping his role on The Watcher just before Christmas 1999, Keanu and Jennifer were making their preparations to welcome their daughter into the world in early January. Having attended ante-natal classes and been spotted by the press shopping for baby items, Keanu was more reconciled to becoming a father than he had been initially. The couple had prepared a nursery at Jennifer’s house, painted with cartoon characters and clouds, and with a wooden rocking horse from The Matrix co-star Laurence Fishburne.
According a friend of the couple named Chynna Rae, however, Jennifer had experienced problems in the first six months of her pregnancy. ‘She had a lot of morning sickness and pain, but she just suffered through it,’ Rae told Now magazine. ‘She wanted that baby so much. Everything seemed to be fine . . . ’
Then Jennifer reportedly called Keanu on Christmas Eve, in a state of worry. ‘She suspected something was abnormal because the baby was not moving,’ another talkative friend told the Australian magazine New Idea. ‘And when she and Keanu went for an ultrasound that day, their worst fears proved true.’ The baby had died in the womb, due to a blood clot in the umbilical cord. ‘Keanu couldn’t really grieve for the baby until Jen was out of harm’s way. Doctors were forced to induce labour and she had to deliver the baby anyway.’
Having reconciled himself to fatherhood, Keanu found it had been snatched away by a cruel twist of fate. Instead of bringing his child home, he had the grim responsibility of making funeral arrangements. When Jennifer and Keanu were photographed at their daughter’s graveside in mid-January 2000, their grief would be printed for all to see in newspapers and magazines around the world.
It wasn’t to be the end of Keanu’s personal sadness. After ten years in remission, his sister Kim had suffered a resurgence of the lymphatic cancer both she and Keanu hoped she’d beaten. After the funeral of his daughter, Keanu moved in with 33-year-old Kim to offer support.
While Keanu’s life seemed to quickly return to normality after these sad events – he was spotted on a trip to the theatre in mid-January 2000, and was even alleged to have been seen out on a date – his relationship with Jennifer Syme didn’t last much beyond the death of their stillborn daughter. Their eventual separation was confirmed at the beginning of March 2000, while Keanu was shooting his next film, The Gift.
‘Keanu and Jennifer really struggled to make it work, but their love wasn’t strong enough to survive the death of their baby,’ another ‘friend’ told the National Enquirer. ‘Keanu was looking forward to being a father to the girl and he is desolate over her death, but he doesn’t know how to share that grief with Jennifer.’
However, Keanu is reported to have pledged financial support to Jennifer Syme – which, under law, he was not obligated to, having neither married nor co-habited with her. It was a selfless gesture to bring to a close a turbulent time. After a triumphant return as a bankable movie star, with The Matrix, Keanu Reeves’ happiness had proved all too short-lived.
