16 Wild Behind-The-Scenes Stories About Keanu Reeves Movies You Never Knew

Wage inequality and poor actor behavior are both rampant in Hollywood, but Reeves seems to be doing his part to fix all that. After The Matrix became an international mega-hit, Reeves suddenly found himself with more money than he knew what to do with. But, instead of hoarding it or spending it extravagantly, Reeves decided to pay it back to the below-the-line crew that made it all possible. He reportedly gave away a chance to share in the sequels' profits (which would have been worth millions) to give more money to the special effects and costume teams. To make it even better, Reeves not only didn't do it for the attention - he actively avoided any attention from the incident. Reeves was quoted saying, "I’d rather people didn’t know that. It was a private transaction. It was something I could afford to do, a worthwhile thing to do.”

That's not the end of Reeves's generosity, though. One Redditor told a story of a friend of his that worked on set with Reeves, writing that, "A family friend builds movie sets, doesn’t design, is one of the poor dudes that just builds. Anyways, he worked on the set for The Matrix, and Keanu heard about the family trouble he was having and gave him a $20,000 Christmas bonus to help him out."

Crying on command is one of the most talked-about tricks in an actor's toolbox. While there are many methods to pull off the tears, apparently a lesser-known method is to have one's co-star whisper insults into their ear during the scene. At least, that's what Winona Ryder explained to the Sunday Times that the director of Bram Stoker's Dracula asked Reeves to do to her. 

According to Ryder, she was having trouble crying on set that day, so the director, Francis Ford Coppola, began to yell insults at her to hopefully get those tear ducts moving. After that didn't work, Coppola tried to get the male actors on set to join in. Ryder said, "Francis was trying to get all of them to yell things that would make me cry. But Keanu wouldn’t; Anthony wouldn’t. It just didn’t work. I was like, really? It kind of did the opposite.”

John Wick originally wasn't named after its homicidal lead and was instead set to be called "Scorn." According to the screenwriter of John Wick, "The only reason it's called John Wick is that Keanu kept referring to it as John Wick." Apparently, the studio's marketing contacted the writer and told him they needed to change the name thanks to the "$5 million in free marketing" that Keanu had been giving the film in interviews by calling it by the wrong title. 

No one is mad at Reeves over the misnaming, though, as even the writer now admits John Wick is a better name for the film and franchise. 

While being questioned on his favorite Reeves stories, the director of Siberia spoke on a deceptively simple task Reeves had to perform in Siberia that he took to with an impressive amount of skill. That task? Picking up a diamond with tweezers. 

Apparently, to expertly hold the diamond as his character would have been able to do, Reeves had to spend weeks practicing. The director said, "I would challenge anyone to do that properly after a month. It’s one of these deceptively, unbelievably difficult things to do. Keanu spent weeks practicing." He went on to say, "People spend years perfecting that craft. Keanu had to figure it out in three weeks, but he doesn’t take shortcuts." 

The Matrix is known for its kung fu just as much as it is for its sci-fi set pieces. Yet, that kung fu training got off to a rocky start. As it turns out, thanks to a herniated disk, Reeves was in a neck brace for his first day of Matrix training. To make matters worse, a couple of days into practice, Hugo Weaving had to start using crutches thanks to trouble with his hip. While Reeves and company obviously made it through training alive and then went on to create a mega-hit, Reeves's neck did continue to bother him throughout the months of training. 

After recovering from his hip injury, Weaving hurt himself even further by cracking two of his ribs during training. At that point, though, the actors had already been through so much that Weaving reportedly shrugged it off, saying, "Oh, who cares?" 

“There were no paranormal events that took place on the film that I know of. Thank God!” said Reeves, referring to production on Constantine. Spiritual warfare may not be a typical concern on movie sets, but Constantine is about an occult detective battling demons, so the concerns may not be completely unwarranted. 

In some movies, actors prepare by learning how to hold an arm or a sword, but Constantine is a film about exorcisms, so Reeves went to learn from an exorcist. Interestingly enough, his concerns were mostly practical. As Reeves put it, "I went with an exorcist for a bit. I just want to know really practical things, like how do you hold someone possessed by the devil."