What It Is Really Like To Work With Keanu Reeves, According To Costars

In the John Wick series, veteran character actor Lance Reddick portrays the hotel manager Charon, who aids the eponymous hero during his various stays at the Continental Hotel. As a surprise hit-turned mega-franchise, John Wick brought Keanu and Reddick together on set many times, however, the rigors of complicated shooting schedules limited the time they spent together.

Despite this, in an interview with Vulture, Reddick recalled a surprising drop-in from Keanu that endeared him for life:

During John Wick: Chapter Four, my first day of filming happened to be Keanu’s birthday. But he wasn’t in the scene. He came to the set anyway at nine o’clock at night with his girlfriend who I had never met… And she told me that she asked Keanu what he wanted to do for his birthday and he said, “I want to go see Lance.” He’d never done this before, but he wrote me a note thanking me for what I brought to the character in these movies. And he wanted to give the note to me. I’ll never forget it. I’m going to cry now.

Throughout the 1990s, Reeves slowly transitioned from comedy into action, and perhaps no film illustrates this process better than 1994's propulsive and compelling Speed. Adding to its appeal is the chemistry between its leads, for Reeves was joined by Sandra Bullock, herself one of the biggest stars of the decade. 

The two share a strong bond, though Bullock has also been straightforward about how Reeves's listening skills can be a doubled-edged sword. As she revealed in an Esquire interview:

He’s a listener. And it drives. People. Crazy… When I first met him, I would spend as much time as I could filling a silence, just to feel comfortable. And the more I jibber-jabbered on, the quieter he would get. And I thought, I don’t understand what’s happening! He’s looking at me with eyes of confusion. He’s quiet. Did I say something to offend him? And then a day or two later, he would arrive with a note or a little package, saying, “I thought about what you said.” And he would have his response.

One of Reeves's endearing qualities is his ability to be in on the joke. Given how famous he is, and how some celebrities have a tendency to be quite full of themselves, this trait sets him apart. In Always Be My Maybe, for example, he plays a somewhat caricatured version of himself. 

While he obviously made the most out of his few scenes, he also took great pains to ensure he didn’t upstage Ali Wong, rightly pointing out she was the actual star. “He didn’t want to make him too cartoony because then that hurts my character. He’s very considerate in that way. Super thoughtful," Wong remarked in an interview. She later elaborated:

Even on the red carpet [at the premiere], he kept on moving to the fringe when we took group shots. It’s Keanu, and everyone’s so excited about him, and everyone else looks like garbage when they’re next to him, so I think he just wanted to be considerate and tried to keep the focus on us. 

Although known for his humility, Reeves is a very bankable star, so it makes sense he'd be concerned about his public image, so he was initially reluctant to join the film Keanu - an action comedy starring Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key as a duo trying to retrieve their stolen kitten. It was the star’s sister who persuaded him to get involved, after she saw a trailer. 

Even then, however, Reeves wanted to meet with director Peter Atencio before he agreed to appear, to make sure he wasn’t being mocked. As Atencio related: 

I told him about the movie and talked him through the story. His personality has just transcended life, in a lot of ways. You wouldn’t have ever guessed that the guy from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure would turn out to be this thoughtful, kind man. 

Ultimately, Reeves provided the voice for the kitten who bears his name.

Although most famous for his live-action roles, Reeves has also done voice work for animated films. Among the most notable is Toy Story 4, in which he voices daredevil motorcyclist Duke Caboom. In a nod to Reeves’s own background, the character is Canadian. 

It might have been easier for the actor to just phone in his voice performance, but this isn’t Reeves’s way. In fact, he asked quite a few questions about just what kind of a character he was going to be voicing. Both co-producer Jonas Rivera and director Josh Cooley have remarked on Reeves’s investment in the role. 

"He’s like a legit movie star, but a gentleman, and one of the most thoughtful actors we ever worked with,” Rivera said. 

Cooley went even further: "He would ask these really deep character questions, and you couldn’t ignore them. He hadn’t said yes to the role yet, either, so it was kind of a test. It really did force us to dig deeper into this character that we thought was more of a gag.” And, Cooley concluded, “It became a well-rounded, real character because of that.”

Like Reeves, Jonathan Groff is known to many for his down-to-earth and earnest demeanor. And, like Reeves, he has played a wide variety of roles, appearing with Reeves in The Matrix Resurrections as Smith (the character previously portrayed by Hugo Weaving). 

In a 2021 interview, Groff spoke eloquently about how fascinating it is to encounter Reeves: 

He's so many contradictions at the same time, because he's very real. There's no bells and whistles. He doesn't come with a team of people that you have to go through to have a conversation with Keanu. He's very normal. And then at the same time, he's Keanu Reeves. And on this particular set, he's Thomas Anderson. He's Neo. He's inhabiting this intense, iconic person in the world of film. And it's like, he is those exact things at the exact same time. He's such a living, breathing beautiful contradiction.