Keanu Reeves explores his dark side

By BOB THOMPSON -- Sun Media

HOLLYWOOD -- Underestimating Keanu Reeves is an easy thing to do.

Maybe it's because he's a little awkward, unsure of what he should say and how he should say it.

Maybe it's because he dropped out of high school as an ambitious and obsessive teenager hankering for a serious actor's life in L.A.

After 22 films and 19 years of playing parts good, bad and incomplete, the Toronto-raised Reeves still thrives on working at his craft as if it's some sort of high-minded adventure.

Sure, poster-boy movie images have defined him -- Bill & Ted's two adventures, Speed and The Matrix. But, dude, that's not his fault.

Dogstar is. It's his group. He's the bass player, and they still tour.

"We played in San Francisco recently and in Santa Cruz, which was wild. So yeah, we're still playing," says 35-year-old Reeves. "It's just good, clean fun for a Friday night."

The two Matrix sequels on the other hand, are big honkin' business where Reeves should earn more than $50 million, including side deals and gross profits to go with the typecasting.

"Well, no, I'm just a part of that film. It's not something like Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series," says Reeves, who is rehearsing martial arts moves for March, when he starts filming the sequels.

Reeves has read the two scripts "and they're fantastic, but I don't think that they want me to give anything away."

Perhaps that's why this reluctant action hero chose to play an almost cameo role as an abusive southern redneck in Sam Raimi's The Gift, which is scheduled to open Friday. It's serious actor stuff with some acclaimed serious actors.

Oscar winner Cate Blanchett is the lead in the horror thriller, portraying a murder-solving psychic. Also in the cast are Oscar-nominated actor Greg Kinnear and another Oscar winner, Hilary Swank.

When Reeves arrived three weeks early for the Georgia filming last February, the action hero rock star pretensions were nowhere to be found. "I had no idea he was going to be that involved in what he was doing," says director Raimi. "Keanu made the part much more than it was."

But that's all Reeves wants you to know about him.

Nothing personal, but Reeves doesn't talk about his sister battling cancer or his girlfriend's still-born birth of the child they were expecting last year.

Or anything lifestyle like. But ask him how he got so good at doing the southern-fried version of a nasty cap-wearing, truck-driving good ol' Georgia boy, and he flashes a sly grin.

"I was trying to find a locality for my character. I got myself a pickup truck and started going out to redneck bars."

He wanted to live in the skin of his character, this violent Donny Barksdale creep.

"I liked his intensity, I liked the language and I was grateful to have the part," he says modestly. "It was a great break for me."

On the set, early in the shooting of The Gift, Reeves did some play-acting rehearsals with Swank, who plays his abused wife.

"It shook me up at first," he says. "That I could feel that rage so easily, but that's also one of the things that I love about acting.

"You learn about yourself, you learn about other people and it also, in an odd way, taught me something," he says. "I tend to be very polite, and sometimes, it doesn't behoove me to be polite to some people.

"So, it was funny, but I remember a simple, little thing," he recalls. "I was in this bar and this woman turned to me and said, 'Hey you, come here and give me your autograph.'

"I had been working on Donny Barksdale, and what I called it was, 'I was going to go get my Donny on.' So I got my Donny on, and I went, `What?' and I gave her this look and she said, `Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.' Then I dropped it, and I was like, `That's okay.'"

Reeves chuckles at the memory of the very un-Reeves-like moment.

"I was like the Incredible Hulk for a second, like Donny was coming out of my shirt," he says.

"I was thinking later, like, 'Yeah, okay, speak up for yourself sometimes.'"

And sometimes, now, he does.