Keanu Reeves Says "Grief And Loss, Those Things Don’t Ever Go Away"

Oct 28, 2019 by apost team

Keanu Reeves is one of the most famous actors of our day. Whether you know him as a time traveling musician in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Neo in The Matrix trilogy, or the titular assassin from the John Wick franchise, Reeves is a fixture in Hollywood.

Despite all his success, at 54 years old, Reeves has faced his share of heartache and tragedy in his lifetime. The Canadian-American actor’s first child was stillborn, his fiancé died in a car crash, and his best friend, fellow actor River Phoenix, died from a drug overdose. While many of the losses in Reeves’s life are in the past, the actor revealed in a candid interview that one never truly recovers from grief and loss.

Speaking with Hadley Freeman of The Guardian while promoting John Wick: Parabellum, Reeves revealed that he used his experiences with tragedy to portray his character. Reeves explains that much like his real life, Wick has a tragic past.

As fans of the series know, Wick is grief-stricken by the loss of his wife. In approaching this facet of Wick’s personality, Reeves told Freeman that he looked to his own experiences following the death of his fiancé, Jennifer Syme. In 1999, Reeves and Syme were going to have a little girl named Ava when the child was stillborn eight months into Syme’s pregnancy. The loss of baby Ava hit Reeves and Syme hard and the two broke up a year later. In 2001, Syme died in a car crash after fighting severe depression.

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Reeves told The Guardian that this experience became the foundation for his portrayal of Wick. In portraying the character, Reeves says that he came to understand that one never gets over grief and that the people that you lose stay with you forever. The actor also spoke of his earliest encounter with loss. When Reeves was only three-year-old, he and his mother were abandoned by his father.

Reeves told Freeman that while he is sure that the loss of his father harmed him in some way, he can’t be sure how as he never had the memories most people have of normal family life. Reeves added that in the middle of the 90s, just as his acting career began to takeoff, his father tried to contact him in an effort to take advantage of his success. Reeves ignored his father’s attempts at getting back into his life, remarking that while you have to have a license to drive a car or even go fishing, anyone can father a child. Shortly after trying to get back into Reeves’s good graces, his father was put in jail for heroin possession and trying to trade the substance.

Despite all of the adversity in Reeves’s life, the actor turned his grief into a syphon for success. The actor even uses the fruits of his labor to help our society’s most vulnerable people.

“Well, for the character and in life, it’s about the love of the person you’re grieving for," he explained, "and any time you can keep company with that fire, it is warm. I absolutely relate to that, and I don’t think you ever work through it. Grief and loss, those are things that don’t ever go away. They stay with you.”

Just as Reeves put his grief into his acting and philanthropy, is it important to remember that are many things one can do to combat feelings of loss and hopelessness. Primarily, it is important to remember that grief usually manifests itself in five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

To fully come to terms with your loss, it is important to let your emotions run their course and never to bottle them up. While you might never be able to fully overcome your grief, there are several things that you can do to get your mind off the tragedies that you have experienced. Many experts recommend additional counseling and support group meetings, spending time with your friends, starting a new hobby, and devoting your time to volunteer work and serving the community.

What do you think of how actor Keanu Reeves has used tragedies in his past help others and more efficiently portray his roles? What do you do to overcome grief from the losses in your life? Let us know in the comments - and make sure you pass this along to your friends and family!