In an interview with Esquire UK, The Matrix star Keanu Reeves discussed what it is like to be an A-list movie star in 2017. Reeves discussed lessons he learned while working in Hollywood, past failures, losing friends, having children, and being a “normal guy.”
Then, Reeves was asked if he enjoys preparing for a new movie role. Reeves responded by saying:
“Yeah. I don’t have anything better to do! I have nothing going on! I have no life! It’s just going to work and preparation.”
Reeves then comments on being a cliché.
“I’m every cliché,” Reeves tells me. “Fucking mortality. Ageing. I’m just starting to get better at it. Just the amount of stuff you have to do before you’re dead. I’m all of the clichés, and it’s embarrassing. It’s all of them. It’s just, ‘Oh my God. OK. Where did the time go? How come things are changing? How much time do I have left? What didn’t I do?’ I’m trying to think of the line from the sonnet… ‘And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er / The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan / Which I new pay as if not paid before’.
“So, yeah,” he smiles. “I’m that guy.”
But most importantly, Keanu Reeves discussed the hardest part of being an actor. After his movie The Day the Earth Stood Still flopped at the box office, Reeves learned that stars “are always fighting for a career.”
“Sometimes I call that The Day my Career Stood Still. I kind of went to Studio Movie Jail.” It seems he’s apparently still only as bankable as his last movie. “For me that is true. Yeah. You’re always fighting for a career. I mean, there’s a few people who [don’t have to worry]…” Then he changes his mind. “No: you’re always fighting for a career.”
The hustle never stops not even for Keanu Reeves.
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