Keanu Reeves Once Shared the Gross Details of a Scary Motorcycle Accident
Keanu Reeves loves riding motorcycles but there’s always the risk of a fall or two. The actor has suffered his fair share of spills, including one gruesome wipeout that left him with a broken tooth and a scar up his leg. None of his accidents have kept him from continuing to ride, however.
Keanu Reeves had 1 terrifying accident
During a 2011 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Reeves was asked about riding motorcycles and shared some of the gross details of one particularly scary motorcycle accident.
“You do fall off motorbikes a lot,” Norton noted.
Reeves explained, “It’s a weird thing, I’ve had some good luck and some back luck,” sharing how being alive is the “good luck.”
“The bad luck is I’ve got a fake tooth, I’ve got a huge scar here [on his leg]. I’ve got a plate in my neck,” he explained. “But that’s not all just the motorcycles, but yeah, I’ve come off the bike a few times.”
Reeves shared the details of the motorcycle accident that scarred his leg. “Yeah, that was the one where a car pulled out in front of me and I was kind of trying to decide … this was just after I had the plate in the neck … and I was deciding as I was kind of about to hit the car,” he said.
“I started to veer but then the car saw me and started to move and then he stopped. And then I was just like, ‘Oh man,” the actor recalled.
The accident left Reeves in shock and mesmerized by a broken bone
In that split second, Reeves had to “decide whether to drop the bike or jump off the bike and go over the car. And then by the time I kind of figured that all out I took the bumper off of his car and I ended up sitting on the ground,” he shared.
Reeves continued, “And then that bike was lying over there and then my tooth was cut in half and I had blood in my mouth. And then the guy came over and he was freaking out but I was in shock so I was like, ‘It’s OK.’”
“The thing about it is as I was sitting there … my skin was open on my shin and bone white is very white,” he said. “So I kept touching it, [saying to his friend] ‘Look how white that is, that’s crazy.’”
A woman came to check on him to make sure he was OK, and asked the paramedic, “Is that Keanu Reeves?”
“And he’s like, ‘What?’” then turned to Reeves to ask, “Can I have your autograph?,” the actor shared.
Keanu Reeves is co-founder of Arch Motorcycle Company
During a 2015 interview for CBS Sunday Morning, Reeves discussed his motorcycle obsession and shared why he co-founded Arch Motorcycle Company.
“I love riding motorcycles,” he explained. “There’s something about the freedom of it … I love how they look, how they smell, how they feel.”
Reeves had a bike custom-built by Gard Hollinger in 2011 and wanted to partner with him to make more. Hollinger was surprisingly not on board initially. “Quite honestly, we had conversations about how his celebrity might affect us negatively,” he explained. “Just the perception that it’s a vanity project, that you’ve got this person who’s a public figure involved just for that aspect. And it couldn’t be further from the case, you know?”
Reeves, it turns out, is very involved. “He’s like the ultimate test rider,” Hollinger shared. “‘Cause he rides so much. Anything that can be broken, he’ll break it.”
