Hollywood superstar Keanu Reeves isn’t only a hero in the movies but in real life too. Many people know him for his big success on the big screen films such as The Matrix, Speed, and John Wick, while others know him as the kindest and most generous man in Hollywood.
However, his kindness might have been influenced from his tragic life, filled with loss and sorrow. He has made it his life mission not to let these tragedies deter him from giving back to society and he has helped others as much as he possibly can which has helped him through his struggles.
Reeves hasn’t exactly had an easy life. For starters, when Keanu Reeves was only 3 years old his father who was previously imprisoned for selling heroin, left his family. Throughout his childhood, he moved around the world living with various stepfathers in places including Sydney, New York and Toronto. This meant he attended many different high schools, which was not easy for him since he was diagnosed with dyslexia. When Reeves attended a college in Canada where he excelled in sports becoming the ice hockey team’s goalkeeper, an injury forced him to look at other career paths which led him to the actor he is today. He eventually graduated but then at the age of 23, he lost his best friend to a drug overdose.
Later in life, Reeves’s long-term girlfriend, Jennifer Syme had a miscarriage, eight months into her pregnancy she gave birth to the stillborn daughter. Several weeks later Syme died in a car accident, she was only 29 years old!
When it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, his younger sister Kim was diagnosed with leukemia. The actor became her primary caretaker as she battled the illness for a decade before entering remission. During her battle, Reeves donated to multiple cancer charities and he also set up his own foundation in Kim’s honor without attaching his name to it. His private foundation funds cancer research and also supports kids’ hospitals and children’s wards. Thankfully, his sister finally recovered and since then Keanu has dedicated his life to helping others.
Reeves said:
I have a private foundation that’s been running for five or six years, and it helps aid a couple of children’s hospitals and cancer research. I don’t like to attach my name to it; I just let the foundation do what it does.
In addition to this, Reeves also manned the phones at a Stand Up to Cancer telethon in 2008. The actor volunteered to be the goalkeeper during a charity ice hockey match for SCORE (Spinal Cord Opportunities for Rehabilitation Endowment) a charity founded after a UCLA hockey player’s spinal cord was crushed in a post-season game.
His generosity doesn’t end there, countless online stories describe how Reeves has kindly helped them.
One Reddit user, bo2dd2, explained:
Back in the late 90’s and fresh out of college I got my first job as an assistant prop designer on the set of Chain Reaction (Keanu was a supporting actor with Morgan Freeman). Every day for the last few weeks of filming, Keanu treated the stage hands and ‘grunt workers’ (including myself) by taking us out for free breakfast and lunch. He was genuinely a very nice guy to work with. That was one example (that involved me directly), but (on the same set), I remember him going out of his way to give my friend a ride to the repair shop to pick up his car.
Since then, I’ve worked on about 30 different sets and have never met an actor as generous and friendly as him. Most actors I’ve seen and worked with are total [expletive] who always think they are better than us. Keanu on the other hand, at the very least, was socially approachable and definitely kindhearted
Another Reddit user known as ‘kahi’ wrote about how the actor gave a set builder who was having ‘family trouble’ $20,000 as a Christmas bonus to help him out.
Kahi said:
He also was one of the only people on the set that genuinely wanted to know peoples names, would say ‘hello’ and mean it, and would talk to people as they were his peers and not below him. I’ve never heard anyone say Keanu is douche, seems like the nicest person in Hollywood.
During the filming of the “The Matrix Reloaded”, Reeves gave Harley-Davidson motorcycles as special Christmas bonuses to each member of the special effects team.
Not only is Reeves generous with his money, but he is also happy to give up his time for others even though they don’t ask for it – from giving up his seat on public transport to driving someone home 50 miles out of his way because their car broke down. Most famously though in 1997 Reeves was seen hanging out with a homeless person on the streets of Hollywood, sharing drinks, snacks, and stories, keeping him company.
Keanu does not turn his generosity into a public relations stunt and he never boasts about the brilliant work that he does. He does not need to be recognized for his charity which shows that he does this all purely out of the kindness of his heart.
