Samuel Reeves has not seen or heard from his famous son in decades

The father gets teary-eyed remembering standing with his son on a lava cliff above crashing waves along the Big Island's southeast coast several years ago.

"Occasionally, the spray would wash over the shelf, and the water would rush around our legs, and I would lift him up and hold him really tight," he recalled. "Then this big old wave really almost swept us right out.

"I caught my boy just as he was being sucked away by knee-deep water. I think Keanu was 11."

Since that moment some 25 years ago, Samuel Nowlin Reeves has spent little time with his famous actor-son, Keanu Charles Reeves.

The elder Reeves has not spoken with his son, or his daughter Kim, for more than two decades, although he has tried to contact Keanu -- who is named after Samuel's uncle, Henry Keanu Reeves -- several times.

"I pretty much know what he's doing, but he's made it clear that he wants nothing to do with me," said Reeves, 59. The father knows, for instance, that daughter Kim suffered from leukemia but is in remission and that Keanu and former girlfriend Jennifer Syme had a stillborn child, a girl named Ava, in January.

Reeves was returning from Waikiki Beach early this month when he walked in on a telephone conversation between his mother and aunt.

"I heard Mom say Keanu was killed in a car accident, and I flipped out," the father said. "I didn't know I was so emotionally connected to the kid; I cried, man, I cried."

The truth was that Syme died in an auto accident, something Reeves would find out after his cousin searched the Internet for information.

"My feeling was so intense that it told me how much I missed the kid," said Reeves.

Still, he did not send a sympathy card to his son.

"It's been so long for everything."

Reeves understands that his vagabond lifestyle -- including more than 20 years of drug use and heroin addiction -- contributed to his estrangement from his kids. He hit bottom in 1992 when he was arrested at Hilo Airport while attempting to sell heroin to an acquaintance.

"All of a sudden, we were surrounded by cops," he says.

Reeves was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was paroled two years after the arrest. He returned to his mother's modest two-bedroom home in Kapahulu, an easy walk from Waikiki Beach, where he often goes after visiting a Kakaako drug treatment center for his daily dose of methadone. He earned his GED while in prison.

Standing on the porch of his mother's home, Reeves says he wants to go to a nearby park to talk. Reeves, 5 feet 10 inches tall and 230 pounds, limps from arthritis, has Grave's disease, diabetes, heart problems and needs serious dental work.

During a two-hour interview, he makes no excuses for his life, blaming only himself for his troubles, and admits, "I'm embarrassed by it all."

"I didn't envision my life this way," he said. "I had no idea when I was partying at 30 that at 59 I would be living with my mother (Sarah Lillian Reeves, 78) in my grandmom's house and be on food stamps."

Asked if he thinks his wealthy son could help, Reeves snaps, "This is not Keanu's problem; it's mine."

Reeves dismisses several things that have been written about him, chiefly that he abandoned his family when Keanu was 2 years old. He says he did travel with his brother, caring for horses owned by his stepfather, but that he shared a Toronto apartment with wife Patricia, a former Paris showgirl, until Keanu was "about 5," and remained close to the boy for years. Reeves and Patricia divorced when their son was 15, he said.

The couple had met and married in Beirut, Lebanon, when Reeves was 21, Patricia, 19. Keanu and Kim were both born in Beirut, although other media have reported that Kim was born in Australia.

Toronto was more accessible to Reeves' mother, "who raised those kids," he said. "She would come back and forth between Toronto and Honolulu."

Reeves admits to having "lots of fun" during the turbulent '60s, adding it was "a hard time to be married." He remarried twice after divorcing Patricia and has not spoken to his first wife for 30 years.

It is not surprising that Samuel Reeves, who was born in Honolulu and attended Waikiki Elementary, became a wanderer. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried, the family moved to various cities in Europe. Reeves left Hawaii at age 10.

He remained in Beirut because he liked the city, working for a time in a publishing house as a clerk. He says he learned some French and Hebrew -- but, "I have no trade at all."

He met Patricia when she was performing at a Beirut casino.

"She roped me right in as soon as I saw her. When she got pregnant, she just flat out told me, 'I'm going to pop out the little buggah, so we're getting married.' It was fine with me."

There's a glow in Reeves' eyes when he speaks of certain incidents involving his son, and his recall of tiny details is surprising after so many years. He talks in painful detail about trying to contact Keanu while in prison.

"I remember I was reminiscing a bit, and I wrote to him about some of the times we had," Reeves laughed nervously. "Never got a response."

Still, Keanu's celebrity status made prison life easier.

"It was the first time I realized that Keanu was big time, and all these part-Hawaiians were so proud because Keanu was part-Hawaiian," Reeves said. "The guards would take care of me and make sure I got good jobs."

When Keanu's band, Dogstar, performed at World Cafe in Honolulu last year, Reeves dropped off a note at the club that included his home phone number. The venue is near Reeves' methadone clinic.

"I didn't really expect a response."

Until about age 15, Keanu was a frequent visitor to the 25-acre Big Island farm that Samuel had bought from his grandmother. The property is now owned by a 21-year-old daughter from Reeves' second marriage.

"I remember Keanu liked trucks, building things and music," Reeves said. "His mother chased him away and that was it. I was upset about it, but I just figured that was the way it was. It's a wonderment to me how I let it happen."

Could it have been his drug use? "I've always smoked pot," he said. "In Beirut I did some cocaine and heroin, then I stopped, but started again in Hawaii."

Recently, while going through old boxes, Reeves found several letters he wrote that he never sent to Keanu.

"I don't know why I didn't mail them."

Then he remembers an interview with his son he recently read. "Keanu said my life was 'tragic' and, oh boy, does that hurt. Sad, yeah? I never figured things would end up this way. But he'll always be my boy."

HOLLYWOOD heart-throb Keanu Reeves has not spoken to his father for 24 years.

The Matrix star, about to start filming back-to-back sequels to the box office smash, is said to hate the man who dumped him and his mother for a life of crime.

But Samuel Reeves, 62, fresh out of jail after serving six years for cocaine and heroin possession, wants to see his boy again. He hopes to be able to meet his son before he flies to Sydney to shoot the Matrix films.

Mr Reeves said he doesn't want Keanu's sympathy, nor his money. He just wants to say hello -- and sorry for the heartache he caused his family for so long.

A Hawaiian-Chinese farmer who trained as a geologist, Mr Reeves has left his jail cell and is working as a chef. He said it would be hard when -- and if -- he and his son met again.

"I'd love to see him again, it would be cool," he said.

"But there's no way we could go back and get what we've missed. We'd just have to meet each other as adults, take it up where we are."

His actor son was just two when Mr Reeves split from his English showgirl wife Patricia. She allowed Keanu and younger daughter Kim to see their father periodically, but not after he got involved in drugs.

A teenage Reeves visited his father for the last time at his farm on Hawaii in 1977.

He was said to be furious when he heard his dad had received a 10-year jail sentence for drug trafficking in 1994.

"He does not love his father," Reeves cousin, Leslie Reeves, said. "He has nothing but contempt for him. He hates him."

THE Hollywood action hero Keanu Reeves has been asked to play the toughest role of his life - as dutiful son after his father's release from prison.

Samuel Nowlin Reeves, 62, who served two years for drug offences, has not seen Keanu since he was a teenager, but is ready to fly around the world to make up for lost time with the star of Speed and The Matrix.

Hollywood is populated with angry children raging at unworthy parents. The Reeves family saga is exotic even by American standards, however - all the more so because Sam Reeves has admitted responsibility for many of the problems.

"I wish I had done things differently for him," said Reeves Sr last week of the son he last saw when he was 13, in his first interview after being freed from a prison near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. "I think we would find we had a lot in common. He laughs like me, walks like me and holds himself like me."

Reeves Sr, a Hawaiian-Chinese farmer who trained as a geologist, met his Hampshire-born wife in the early 1960s when both were students at the American University in Lebanon. They settled in Beirut, but split up when Keanu, whose name means "cool wind over a mountain", was two years old.

Patricia Reeves took her son and his sister Kim to Canada, where she made a living by designing clothes for rock bands such as Led Zeppelin.

According to friends, Keanu was an insecure, angry child. "He resented the way he felt his father had deserted him," said Shawn Aberle, who delivered papers with him in Toronto in the 1970s. "In an early film, I Love You to Death, Keanu has a line about how fathers are only fathers at the moment of conception, and that was how he felt about Sam."

During this time Reeves Sr was struggling to run his farm. Dragged down by debt and his drug habit, he began importing Mexican heroin and cocaine in the 1990s. He was jailed for 10 years, but freed early for good behaviour.

Leslie Reeves, Keanu's Hawaiian cousin, said the actor was furious when he heard about his father's arrest. "He said, 'Who the hell needs this?' He has nothing but contempt for his father, having been brought up by powerful women who do not have time for drugs, and I do not see him getting over that in a hurry."

Keanu, 36, has rarely spoken about his father. Two years ago, however, he told Rolling Stone magazine: "I feel like I got my father's blood, and I am not that happy about it."

Indeed, he has not entirely escaped his father's self-destructive traits. He broke ribs when he crashed his beloved Norton 850 motorbike while driving without lights at night down a canyon, and in 1993 he was arrested on drink-driving charges. But Reeves calmed down after his friend, the actor River Phoenix, died from a drugs overdose.

His career has continued to thrive. His role as Neo in two sequels to the science fiction hit, The Matrix, for which he will earn £30m, elevates him to Hollywood's A-list.

Reeves Sr, by contrast, is now training as a chef. He hopes to be able to meet his son before Keanu flies to Australia for the new Matrix films, as well as Kim, who is in remission from leukaemia.

Until then, he will have to continue watching from afar. "I loved The Matrix," he said. "It feels so cool to see my son up there on the silver screen."