This month and next, the Roxie Theater is presenting A Keanu Summer featuring five of our dude’s most excellent films. To celebrate this series — and the man at its center — we’re each taking a moment to honor Keanu and his many, many facets.
Picture this: Keanu Reeves hand in hand with the artist Alexandra Grant at a swanky Gucci-sponsored gala. In 2011, they had published a motivational grown-up children’s book together; seven years later, they were cozying up for everyone to see. It was the hard launch that broke a million hearts and melted a million more. Here was a movie star whose private life was famously opaque, a celebrity for whom celebrity was an inconvenience. But on that night, on that step-and-repeat, Keanu let us into his world for a moment — and everyone devoured it. It helped that, unlike Leo (and the wanna-Leos) and various Baldwins of the world, he was dating someone who was age-appropriate and a non-Hollywood Person, to boot.
The world swooned.
His romantic body of work only adds to the Keanu allure. He’s the boyishly handsome and perfect-on-paper foil to the gruff dickheadedness of Jack Nicholson in Something’s Gotta Give (2003); in The Lakehouse (2006), he’s a proper Leading Man opposite Sandy Bullock. Even in the more recent Always Be My Maybe (2019), where he’s playing himself with pitch-perfect exaggerated douchebaggery, Keanu remains totally, ineffably charming.
Keanu’s true appeal lies in the intangibles. At 60, he’s still as devilishly, impossibly youthful-looking as he was in Speed (1994). Keanu can be brooding and silly, tough and nice. He is not the subject of any Celebrity Horror Story encounters. There’s a reason why romance scammers chose to impersonate Keanu Reeves and not, say, George Clooney who even when he’s not playing Danny Ocean always seems like he’s about to rip you off (with a twinkle and a smile). Keanu is The Perfect Man because he can be whoever you want him to be. The cherry on top? After all this time, he’s still with Alexandra Grant. Swoon.
