Keanu Reeves is one of the most successful action stars of all time, with hit films such as Point Break, Speed, as well as The Matrix and John Wick trilogies. Given Reeves’ impressive career, fans might be wondering about Keanu Reeves’ first movie.
Keanu Reeves’ first movie depends on how one defines the word ‘Movie’. Reeves’ first on-camera role was in a short film called One Step Away, but his first theatrical release was 1986’s Youngblood.
Read more below about how Keanu Reeves’ short film debut and first movie release helped him become a major box office star.
Humble Beginnings and Ice Hockey Hopes
Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1964, but had a bustling childhood with his family moving from Sydney, to New York and finally settling in Toronto. During that time, Keanu’s mother had married Hollywood and Broadway director Paul Aaron.
Keanu began acting in local children’s theater productions and had moved on to helping on the set of Aaron’s movies by the time he was a teenager, but at the time Keanu’s main passion was playing ice hockey. In fact, Reeves was so good at ice hockey that he was named an MVP player for his high school team and won a tryout with the Windsor Spitfires, a team in the Ontario Hockey League.
However, an unexpected injury prompted Reeves to turn his focus to acting, and he left his ice hockey dreams behind. He was expelled from high school and never returned, opting to begin working on various television shows in Canada.
National Film Board of Canada
Though he had amassed several television and commercial roles in the early 1980s, Reeves’ first appearance in a film was Robert Fortier’s One Step Away, in which Reeves played a troubled youth in this coming of age tale. The film was produced by the National Film Board of Canada, a government organization that makes documentaries and a wide variety of alternative films.
Worlds Collide
As Keanu continued to nab television roles, he had no that his former love of hockey was about to coincide with his acting career. Shortly after filming One Step Away, Reeves was cast in 1986’s Youngblood alongside Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe, both of whom were already bona fide stars.
Youngblood follows Lowe’s character, a teen living in the rural countryside as he follows his goal to play professional hockey. Keanu Reeves played the role of Heaver, the goalie for the Hamilton Mustangs.
Though the film was not a box office success, Reeves’ history with ice hockey helped him to win the role in what turned out to be his first major motion picture, and starring alongside two of Hollywood’s hottest actors opened a lot of doors for Keanu’s burgeoning career.
Watch Keanu Reeves discuss how hockey has impacted his life and career in the YouTube video below.
Box Office Success and a Bona Fide Action Star
As Reeves continued to work into the early 1990s, he took on diverse roles in many films, including Dangerous Liaisons, Dracula and the cult classic Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its sequel. Even though Reeves was positively reviewed as a dramatic actor, the latter two films overshadowed his other work, and he became known for the slacker role.
However, all of that changed when Reeves took on the role of Jack Traven in 1994’s Speed opposite Sandra Bullock and Dennis Hopper. Though the premise of a police officer and a random citizen (Reeves and Bullock, respectively) having to keep a runaway bus armed with a bomb going above 55mph, all while trying to stop the madman responsible (Hopper) might be far-fetched, the film resonated with critics and audiences and became a huge financial success, grossing over $350 million at the box office.
With major star power under his belt, Keanu Reeves continued to act consistently throughout the rest of the decade, but it was his role as Neo in 1999’s The Matrix which made him an internationally known name in the movie industry. The Matrix was a genre-bending, visually groundbreaking and career-defining film for everyone involved.
Ultimately the film spawned two sequels and solidified Reeves’ place as an action heavyweight, but he continued to take on more serious roles and focus on his band, Dogstar, throughout the 2000s.
Personal Tragedies
In the midst of all this, Keanu Reeves dealt with a series of personal tragedies, including his daughter with ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, arriving stillborn, followed by Syme’s untimely death in an automobile accident two years later.
Keanu Reeves had always closely guarded the details of his private life, but it seemingly took a toll on the hard working actor. Numerous outlets snapped photos of the actor looking sad and downtrodden over the course of several years, causing the media to dub him “Sad Keanu.”
Career Resurgence
Despite his personal tragedies, Reeves continued to work consistently, though his popularity and box office draw had begun to waver by the end of the 2000s. What might have been the end of a successful career for many, Keanu Reeves bounced back with his most popular role to date: John Wick.
2014 saw the release of this action thriller, in which Reeves plays a former hitman forced to come out of retirement in order to avenge the death of his beloved pet, gifted to him by his recently-deceased wife. The film was a box office success, surpassing industry analyst projections, and put Keanu squarely back on the map as an action star and a member of the Hollywood A-list.
John Wick, much like The Matrix before it, spawned two sequels, each a bigger financial success than the last. Despite personal and professional setbacks throughout the years, Keanu Reeves has proven that he can reinvent himself and has longevity in the industry
Though no one could have imagined that a short film about a troubled teen and a teen drama about ice hockey would start the career of one of the biggest action stars of all time, both movies paved the way for the Keanu Reeves films of today.