Keanu Reeves Once Felt That His Acting Would’ve ‘Broken’ Stanley Kubrick
Keanu Reeves has worked with a few notable directors such as Francis Ford Coppola and the Wachowskis. But he once quipped that his performance might be a bit off-putting for the late Stanley Kubrick for a hilarious reason.
Why Keanu Reeves joked that Stanley Kubrick wouldn’t like him
Reeves hasn’t always felt he was the best actor. There was a point some time in his career where he questioned how adept he was at the art form. But the majority of audiences have agreed that the actor has been a capable enough actor to stick around. His fans have allowed Reeves to enjoy a lengthy career, with seemingly a hit franchise to his name every decade.
One of those franchises, The Matrix, helped Reeves in more ways than one. The 1999 sci-fi feature only added to his net worth and star-power. But on a personal level, The Matrix managed to give Reeves the chance to really stretch his range as an actor. Which many films didn’t.
“Those films afforded me the chance to do, like, 40 takes,” Reeves said in a 2010 interview with The Guardian. “And you don’t oftentimes get to do that. On Henry’s Crime, it was, like, ‘Take three? Wow!’”
His desire to do a lot of takes was why he felt he’d eventually get on Stanley Kubrick’s nerves. The filmmaker was also known for doing many takes, but Reeves joked that he would push Kubrick to his limits.
“After take 400, Kubrick would’ve been, [adopts grizzled Brooklyn accent] ‘All right, cut,’” Reeves said. “And I’d be, like, ‘Stanley, can I do one more?’ ‘Whaaat?’ ‘Look, I know I’m just drinking this glass of water, but I think I can find another side to this. Let’s just do one more, OK?’ ‘Arrrgh, OK, Reeves.’ You know what? I would’ve broken Kubrick. ‘Please, sir, can I have some more?’ ‘Take 600. All you gotta do is walk across the road.’ ‘Come on, Stanley, one more!’”
Stanley Kubrick once shared he only did a lot of takes when his actors were bad
Kubrick’s reputation for doing many takes wasn’t unfounded. According to Collider, one of the scenes in The Shining alone took 148 takes to get right. The filmmaker acknowledged the reputation preceding him. But he also gave his side to the rumors that his takes might have been excessive. Kubrick felt that his actors were ultimately responsible for the amount of takes that he did.
“Actors are sometimes undisciplined enough not to go home and go to sleep at night and learn their lines, and they go out,” Kubrick once said according to Outstanding Screenplays. “They cannot act without knowing dialogue. If you have to think about anything when you’re acting you cannot work on the emotion. It’s happened on every film. There’s really not much you can do about it.”
Kubrick confided that firing the actor wouldn’t help. Neither would threatening them if they didn’t take their performance more seriously.
“So, you wind up, say, with this particular actor, maybe doing 30 takes of something. Then the guy goes back to America, and if he’s he says, ‘Oh boy, Stanley’s such a perfectionist. He does 100 takes on every scene. I had to do this thing 100 times.’ So 30 becomes 100,’” Kubrick said. “They never say, ‘Why you did so many takes.’ I don’t do a lot of takes when it’s good.”
Keanu Reeves felt he was ‘underestimated’ as an actor
Many film fans and even fellow contemporaries consider Reeves a capable to outstanding actor. But Reeves has noticed that there were a few connected to the film industry that didn’t see much substance to his performances. He admitted that this sometimes bothered him.
“I’ve never felt underestimated by my peers,” he once told New York Post. “By critics, sometimes. I try not to [read reviews], but I’m just such a sucker for that. It’s the bane of the actor: You’ve got to check in with what’s going on around you. It’s just the nature of the beast.”
