Keanu Reeves enjoys being a man of mystery, on and offscreen. He talks to MICHELE MANELIS
KEY POINTS:
Playing a morally ambiguous LAPD officer who finds himself implicated in the death of a fellow officer, Keanu Reeves is surprisingly good in gritty cop thriller Street Kings.
Written by crime novelist James Ellroy and directed by David Ayer, who penned the cop-gone-bad movie Training Day, the film
deals with repugnant elements of the police system.
Reeves has starred in 40-plus movies and more than a dozen TV shows. Despite often negative reviews (including awards at the annual Razzies for worst performances), he is a decent leading man in action or sci-fi movies such as The Matrix, Constantine or Speed, evidently faring much better when dialogue is at a minimum.
In person, the 43-year-old actor is known for his monosyllabic responses. This afternoon at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, Reeves is pleasant enough but doesn't give much away. The movie star who has earned the dubious title of "most beautiful/sexiest actor" on various magazine lists over the past two decades, is low-key and understated.
In Street Gangs, like many of his former roles, Reeves plays the anti-hero. Does he mind how the LAPD will view his portrayal of one of their own?
"Well, the plot is pretty exaggerated, of course. It's Hollywood. But a couple of cops have seen it and they relate to it," he smiles, with a hint of defensiveness.
"The dialogue and the dynamics they all relate to. I mean, this story isn't uniquely LAPD. There's corruption everywhere." He pauses. "And having played a cop I absolutely have more of an idea of what it's like to be in uniform now than I did before."
There's certainly nothing new about the quintessential cop movie, a formula-tested genre many believed to have peaked in the 70s, making movie stars out of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. "David Ayer made a difference to this genre. It has a lot of voices and perspectives in it which makes it different," says Reeves. "In movies like Serpico or even Hollywood Confidential you get an archetype. But this has a little bit more sophistication and grace."
The movie also stars Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker and Golden Globe-winner Hugh Laurie, of TV show House.
The perennially youthful Reeves lives in Los Angeles, and like other movie stars he deals with the perils of fame. He is the latest celebrity casuality of the paparazzi, and is in negotiations to settle with a paparazzo who's accusing Reeves of knocking him down with his car when he pulled out of a parking space.
"Yes, the situation is bad, but no, I haven't thought about moving out of Los Angeles.
"It's a situation that's gotten much more intense than it used to be. It's a drag. It's not on a daily basis but there are days when it's intrusive."
Reeves first came to attention as the slow-witted teenage time traveller in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the surprise hit of 1989. He has gone on to star in some of the most commercially viable Hollywood blockbusters such as The Matrix trilogy, and Speed. He was widely regarded as miscast in movies such as Much Ado About Nothing and Dracula (who could forget his appalling English accent?).
But, it has to be said, he never received due credit for daring to stretch in films as eclectic as Little Buddha or the critically acclaimed My Own Private Idaho.
Born in Beirut, when the city was still known for its beaches, he is the son of English-born Patricia, a former showgirl, and Hawaiian-born geologist, Samuel Nowlin Reeves. (Keanu means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian.) Their marriage didn't last long. Patricia packed up Keanu when he was 2 and took him and younger sister Kim to New York City where she remarried. That union didn't endure for long either.
Meanwhile, his biological father served time in prison for cocaine possession, and lost contact when Reeves was still a child. After the second marriage dissolved, the family moved again, this time to Toronto, Canada, where he attended high school and dropped out. Reeves has had three stepfathers.
In 1999 his girlfriend Jennifer Syme gave birth to the couple's stillborn daughter. Two years later, after the couple had broken up, Syme was killed in a car accident.
Famously tight-lipped about his personal life, he says, "It's not that I decided to be mysterious but I think I just intuited that was the way to go. I obviously like to keep my personal life private and I think it's better that way for the work I do. I want someone to watch a film and I want them to relate to the character. I don't want any perception of my life to get in the way of that."
But he says he understands the media's fascination with celebrities. "I get it. I want to know things about people - but not the minutiae of their lives. I don't really care what CDs someone buys or who someone is dating. I really don't want to know."
For now, Reeves continues to work in films that explore the darker side of life - and that in itself is a mystery as complex as he is. That's how he likes it.