Trio Joins Romantic 'Il Mare'

Mon, Mar 21, 2005, 07:03 AM PT

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - John Corbett, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are diving into "Il Mare." The trio joins Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in the romantic drama based on the Korean film "Siworae," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The story centers on an architect (Reeves) who moves into a new apartment and discovers a letter in his mailbox from a lonely doctor (Bullock). They begin a correspondence, only to discover that they're living in separate times -- two years apart -- and are only linked through the mysterious properties of the mailbox.

Corbett stars as Bullock's ex-fiancee while Aghdashloo plays her medical colleague. Moss-Bachrach portrays Reeves' younger brother.

Christopher Plummer has already been cast as Reeves' father.

The Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow project is adapted for English-speaking audiences by Pulitzer Prize-winning "Proof" scribe David Auburn. "Valentin" director Alejandro Agresti will direct.

Corbett, 43, has appeared in "Tombstone," "Serendipity," "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Raising Helen" and "Bigger Than the Sky." Aghdashloo, 52, was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for starring opposite Ben Kingsley in "House of Sand and Fog." Moss-Bachrach has appeared in "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Mona Lisa Smile" and has a part in the upcoming action flick "Stealth," which will be released in July.

No more rock for Reeves

It looks like Keanu Reeves is turning his back on his music career.

He stars in Radio 1's movie of the month 'Constantine', which is out tomorrow. But, while Keanu's film career is going from strength to strength, his musical aspirations aren't exactly setting the world alight and now he says it's all over. "Dogstar, we couldn't play together anymore about a year and half ago. Then I joined another band called Becky, which is a fantastic band, but I don't play with them anymore."

"They wanted to go on tour and do the whole thing and I was kind of in the way because of my schedule and stuff. So I bowed out." "I just go to shows now - no more rock for Reeves."

Reeves Filming Il Mare in Aurora

Source: Lpfan4lif March 17, 2005

Scooper 'Lpfan4lif' sent us a link to a local report on the shooting of Il Mare, in which Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock reteam for director Alejandro Agresti. The love story concerns a lonely doctor (Bullock) and a frustrated architect (Reeves) who live in the same house two years apart and fall in love via letters they exchange through a mailbox that mysteriously bridges time.

I was checking out my local newspaper today and saw the front page had an article about Keanu Reeves' new movie being filmed in Chicago. They decided to film in my hometown of Aurora, IL a suburb of Chicago (you know where Wayne and Garth live) for three days Monday until today.

You can read the article by clicking on the picture of Reeves on the set below. The article says that John Corbett and Lynn Collins have joined the previously-announced Christopher Plummer in the cast as well.

REEVES TARGETTED BY SPOOKY WARNER BROS GHOSTS

KEANU REEVES and director FRANCIS LAWRENCE were overcome with fear when supernatural forces disrupted shooting on a vital CONSTANTINE scene.

The cast and crew had gathered in sound stage 16 at WARNER BROS' Hollywood lot to work on the spooky blockbuster, but were soon desperate to leave the building when paranormal activity started to arise.

And it was particularly terrifying for all present - because they were all aware of the spooky forces that had tormented movie-makers working on THE EXORCIST and POLTERGEIST.

Lawrence tells Britain's EMPIRE magazine, "It was strange. There was this one set that we worked on that got weird. We were on Warner Bros sound stage 16, and we'd built theses two rooms, the physiotherapy and hydrotherapy rooms - they're a huge part of the ending of the movie.

"And one half of it, the physiotherapy side, just got weird. We were there for six weeks in this room, and people were getting sick, or didn't feel good or got angry. There was just something about that room."

40th birthday plunges Keanu into depression

15/03/2005 - 07:22:43

Hollywood hunk Keanu Reeves found turning 40 so tough last year, he plummeted into a dark period of depression.

The Matrix star says the months since his birthday last September have been a time of reflection, which quickly escalated into morbid brooding about how many years he has left before he dies.

The Canadian actor says: "It was a nightmare. It reminded me of adolescence and it felt like an internal transformation with physical aspect, like when your hormones run wild.

"But this time with a conscious shift, an awareness of your own mortality."

Film

March 12, 2005
Keanu Reeves
by martyn palmer

A few months ago, Keanu Reeves turned 40 and understandably found himself reflecting on his life and speculating about the future. To an outsider, perhaps, this would be a cause for celebration; a chance for Reeves to crack open the Cristal to toast his own incredible success. After all, what more could he possibly wish for? He has fame, acclaim and fabulous wealth, good looks, health and enjoys membership of that exclusive club of actors which allows him to pick and choose the very best scripts Hollywood can provide. But for Reeves, this landmark provoked only a soul-searching reappraisal of his life which took him close to depression. "It was a nightmare," he says. "It reminded me of adolescence and it felt like an internal transformation with a physical aspect, like when your hormones run wild. But this time with a conscious shift, an awareness of your own mortality."

On the surface, Reeves is the embodiment of the Hollywood dream: boy from Toronto arrives in Los Angeles and struggles to get work before breaking into the big time playing, very convincingly, a slacker dude (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), then hits pay dirt as a beefed-up action hero (Speed), before moving into the celebrity stratosphere via The Matrix trilogy which made him a reported $80 million and turned him into one of the biggest stars on the planet.

But it doesn't take a therapist to work out why there is an air of sadness that is as much a part of Reeves as his floppy, jet-black hair or his dark-brown eyes. His is a story both of fabulous success ("I know how lucky I am, I really do," he says) and terrible tragedy. Estranged from his father as a youngster, his personal life since has been marked by pain and loss. His younger sister, Kim, has been fighting leukaemia for several years, and he grieved over the loss of a much-wanted daughter who was stillborn in 1999. The baby's mother, his former girlfriend Jennifer Syme, subsequently died in a car accident some two years after losing their baby.

Such awful events - and there have been more - would be enough to make anyone question how you can be given so much and yet have so much more taken away. It's no wonder, then, that, at 40, Reeves finds himself pondering the meaning of it all. "Maybe it happens to some people a little bit later," he says of his mid-life crisis. "But for me it was the grief, the loss of half a life - because I guess that's what it is - and that's a transition. And understanding mortality forces you to ask those big questions: What have I done? And where am I? It's just something that happened to me, and going through it wasn't pretty. There's been lots of soul-searching and all the other stuff, too... but at least I didn't buy the sports car."

Arguably the most unconventional superstar of the lot, Reeves sharply divides opinion over his acting ability. Some critics, and even some of his peers, have accused him of being wooden, saying he's best when, rather than a nuanced performance, what is required is an impressive physical presence, such as in Speed, as the driver of a runaway bus with a terrorist bomb on board, or in the balletic Matrix films as a high-kicking freedom fighter. Put him up against Al Pacino, as a young lawyer who sells his soul in The Devil's Advocate, and, for some, he's found wanting. Yet he's clearly capable of more than just providing athletic eye candy - he was very good alongside Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in the romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give. And one of his best early performances was in My Own Private Idaho as a male hustler opposite the doomed River Phoenix.

Reeves has never been content to fit into a convenient box. Action stars don't usually start out playing gay prostitutes. And leading Hollywood players are meant to live in a big Bel Air mansion with a fleet of flash cars in the driveway - all of which he could easily afford. Reeves doesn't even have his own home, preferring instead to stay in a succession of hotels, or with friends and family.

He's a bit of a drifter, a new-age soul who starts the day with a Buddhist ceremony to ward off evil spirits and likes to ride his 1974 Norton Commando along the Pacific Coast Highway. He's crashed it eight times so far, and has admitted that he mostly likes to ride without a helmet, which is against the law in California. "Anyone can drive Mulholland Drive without a helmet - it's not getting caught that's the thing," he says, deadpan.

Today, the Norton has been left in the garage, and his impressively honed 6ft 1in frame, upholstered in a midnight black suit of the finest quality, is at the centre of a hive of activity designed to promote his latest film, Constantine, a darkly humorous comic-book thriller in which he plays a kind of rock'n'roll exorcist who has big issues with God and smokes far too much. In fact, he seems to have a ciggie dangling from his mouth in every scene. "I smoked loads. Lots of takes, don't forget. I really do have to give up."

Reeves is unfailingly polite, but sometimes monosyllabic and withdrawn. There are times when interviewing him is a bit like listening to dialogue from the second or third Matrix films - where the machines (which look like giant calamari) scramble all over the place trying to exterminate humankind, and Neo - that's Reeves - as our only hope for salvation, spouts lines that sound quite profound on first hearing, but don't really bear up to scrutiny.

A fairly innocuous opening query about whether he enjoys acting as much these days as he did when he was starting out back home in Toronto, draws this answer: "I think through experience one gains facility, and what interests us as young men and older men changes. And just like any kind of material or craftsmanship, writing or acting, whatever, the performing arts as well as the plastic arts, I think with facility and knowledge of craft comes a deepening and richening of what you are interested in and capable of doing."

But mostly he comes across as a rather charming oddball, a bit of a loner, awkward and perhaps even a little shy. This deadpan rambling may even be a bit of an act; a way of keeping nosy journalists at bay. Rachel Weisz, his co-star in Constantine, who has known him for ten years since they worked together on the thriller Chain Reaction, hints at as much. "We're both a little older and a little wiser," she says. "But in essence he's the same as when I first met him. He is actually very down-to-earth. His private life is very private; he has real friends, a real life. He's a real guy."

When I ask what she likes most about Reeves, she pauses to consider. "There's something just a little quirky about him," she smiles. "I think that's what makes him interesting. He is very enigmatic. Actually, he's very unknowable."

Reeves's own soul-searching has led him to one certainty in his life - he can, at least, take comfort from the work. Perhaps it's a refuge? "I've got nowhere else to go!" He almost shouts this last remark and then starts laughing. Really? Even when sometimes it's held up to such harsh examination? "No, I enjoy it. I really do. And what else am I going to do? If you make films, people are going to see them. I love acting more and more. Maybe 'loving it' isn't the right way to put it, but I'm curious to see what I can do."

Of late, he's been putting that theory to work. There are four movies already in the can. He has a relatively small part as a new-age orthodontist in the critically acclaimed independent drama, Thumbsucker. He plays an undercover cop in Richard Linklater's futuristic thriller A Scanner Darkly, and a disgraced cop in the James Ellroy-scripted, Spike Lee-directed noir, The Night Watchman. But first comes Constantine, in which he's a world-weary, cynical supernatural detective who has literally been to hell and back, and would rather not go there again. Based on the comic book Hellblazer, the film casts Reeves as John Constantine who is cursed with the ability to recognise "the half-breed angels and demons that walk the earth in human skin". The only problem is he then has to see them off back to hell in the hope of saving himself from ending up there, too.

With the excellent Tilda Swinton playing the most bizarre angel Gabriel, some seriously clever special effects, Weisz as a more conventional cop (and possible love interest), and Reeves clearly enjoying himself as a pessimistic anti-hero who is diagnosed with lung cancer at the end of the first act, this is not for everybody. Indeed, die-hard fans of the comic book might point out that Reeves is neither blond nor English - which their Constantine is. "But I hope they feel that we've done justice to the material," he says.

For Reeves, Constantine is not a typical hero, which is why he was interested in the role. "He's far more complicated, cynical and haunted. I thought a lot of this was very dark, but very funny." Does this represent a darker phase in his career? "I liked the material. Hard-edged, hard-boiled, film noir; you know, horror fantasy. It's dealing with universal myths, good and evil, and I like that. I just try to find good material in any genre if I can. I don't want to travel in one direction all of the time."

But Constantine is a man who has seen too much and been dealt too many blows by life. Could he have played him, say, ten years ago? "No, I don't think I could have given the part as much weight. We all have hardships and challenges in this life. The experiences of my life have changed me and informed me. And do I bring that to the characters that I play? Yes, I do." Intensely private, Reeves insists that the contradictions of his life - a very rich man who cares little for the material, a film star who hates being famous - can coexist. "I've been fortunate enough to work in some films that people have enjoyed," he says. "But the celebrity side is not important, because

I like to be able to walk in the world. As much as anything, it's important for me to be able to live life in order to be able to show life."

Reeves was born in Beirut to a Chinese-Hawaiian father (Keanu means "cool air over the mountains") Samuel Nowlin Reeves, and English mother, Patricia, a former dancer and, later, a costume designer. Samuel walked out when their son was just seven, and ended up serving two years of a ten-year sentence for possessing heroin and cocaine. Meanwhile, Patricia took Keanu and his two younger sisters, Kim and Karina, to Toronto. Predictably, his father resurfaced when Reeves hit the big time, but his son wanted nothing to do with him, describing his father as an "acid-taking goofball".

School was not easy, not least because he suffered from dyslexia and found class work difficult. But he was a keen sportsman and excelled at ice hockey and basketball. And at home, his creative side was encouraged by his mother. "She surrounded us with culture and art and we learnt to love ideas - even if we hated high school."

At 15, he decided he wanted to act, picking up work on Canadian television and with local theatrical productions. Two years later, he was in Los Angeles where casting directors found something appealing in this fresh-faced, laidback Canadian. The audience did, too. After a couple of false starts, he made the teenage comedy Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure - playing the wannabe rock star and airhead with such conviction that the part haunted him for years (and playing bass in the now defunct Dogstar probably kept that "dude" image going longer than it should have).

As his career hit highs - from the critically acclaimed surfing movie Point Break to My Own Private Idaho, Much Ado About Nothing, Speed and The Matrix trilogy - Reeves proved resilient in surviving the lows that sometimes followed. He's had a lot more to cope with than bad reviews. The deaths, in 1999 and 2001, of his unborn daughter and of his former girlfriend, to whom he remained close, were body blows, but there have been other blows, too, in the sudden and tragic loss of close colleagues. As he began work on the second and third Matrix films, the R&B singer Aaliyah died in a plane crash before completing her role as Zee. And Gloria Foster, who played The Oracle, died of a heart attack.

On the set of The Matrix, he often cut a solitary figure, and, after filming finished, he rushed to his sister Kim's bedside when she suffered a relapse in her battle against cancer. He spends as much private time with his family as possible and has become skilled at keeping out of the press. When he's dating, the gossip columns usually find out long after he's moved on. Right now, he is apparently single. He's obviously a romantic, but after all that has happened to him, he's sceptical about happy endings. His next film is a romance, Il Mare, which reunites him with Sandra Bullock, his co-star in Speed. "It's about believing in love," he says of the film. "Believing that there's the ultimate person, the ideal who will be your soul mate and that all your pain will go away." And that maybe you can find love more than once? "I'm the wrong guy to ask," he says.

It's the kind of one-liner that John Constantine would be proud of. But you can understand why Keanu Reeves might say it, too.

Constantine opens on March 18

Sighting @ Chicago

I spy . . . Actor Keanu Reeves was back at Gene and Georgetti's on Thursday, lunching with members of the "Il Mare" film crew. . . .

- and -

"Il Mare," the Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock flick set in Chicago, is slated to shoot key scenes at Roosevelt University. The school's ornate 10th-floor library will pull double duty as an architecture school and the backdrop for a memorial service scene.

KEANU'S NEW ROLE PERSUADES HIM TO QUIT SMOKING

Hollywood hunk KEANU REEVES's chain-smoking character in new movie CONSTANTINE helped inspire the actor to quit cigarettes.

Reeves, 40, admits he already smokes too much, but playing demon-busting JOHN CONSTANTINE required him to smoke in almost every scene, almost making him ill.

He explains, "I learned that I shouldn't smoke so much. I probably smoke too much.

"Some of those scenes it was like, 'Watch Keanu turn green.' I should quit."

10/03/2005 18:04

REEVES HATED PUNCHING BLANCHETT IN FILM

KEANU REEVES was reduced to a terrified wreck prior to shooting a violent scene with his THE GIFT co-star CATE BLANCHETT, because he had to punch her in the stomach.

Reeves hesitated over how he was going to hit Blanchett without injuring her, until the brave actress ordered him to go ahead and do it.

He says, "I had to punch Cate Blanchett in the stomach. I remember we were thinking, 'Where can my character, DONNIE, hit her? Shall I punch her in the head, shall I slap her?'

"Then the stunt guy said, 'Hit her in the stomach, in the f**king womb.' And I was like, 'Yeah, that's it, just walk up and punch her in the f**king guts.'

"And that was really hard. Really hard. Cate was saying, 'Look, just do it, hit me.' And I was like scared, you know.

"But eventually I did and it was OK. I didn't hurt her."

KEANU TO PLAY SINBAD

KEANU REEVES is set to sail as Arabian hero SINBAD in new adventure THE 8TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD.

XXX director ROB COHEN will take charge of the movie, which will be the first Hollywood Sinbad movie for 30 years.

Past Sinbads include DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR, GENE KELLY and THE HULK star LOU FERRIGNO.

10/03/2005 09:24

Keanu Reeves as Sinbad?

Posted on Wed, 9-Mar-2005

"Like, wow, the sea's a little choppy today dudes".

Uber-Talented "Dogstar" rocker Keanu Reeves is in talks to play iconic adventurer, Sinbad, in a new film from "xXx" director Rob Cohen.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Neal Moritz will produce the film, called "The 8th Voyage of Sinbad", which is set up to sail at Columbia.

The movie, planned for years apparently, follows the continuing adventures of Sinbad and his crew, who are marooned off the coast of China in the 8th century. Once ashore, they embark on a quest for the Lamp of Aladdin, teaming up with an empress to battle fantastical creatures and a rebellious Chinese general.

"Whoa".

Keanu Reeves to Set Sail as Sinbad

March 9 2005

Keanu Reeves looks set to follow his role in the forthcoming fantasy 'Constantine' by playing an equally heroic character in the shape of the world's most famous sailor.

'The 8th Voyage of Sinbad' will see Reeves play the titular legend as he embarks on a quest to find the lamp of Aladdin in eighth-century China.

Along the way Sinbad battles all manner of ferocious creatures, while at the same time finding love in the shape of a beautiful empress.

Rob Cohen ('The Fast and the Furious', 'XXX') is in talks to direct the long-gestating project, while scribe Charlie Mitchell is currently rewriting the script.

Meanwhile, Reeves can be seen in award-winning indie drama 'Thumbsucker', animated Philip K Dick adaptation 'A Scanner Darkly', and comic book epic 'Constantine', which hits UK screens at the end of next week.

Lynn Collins

Lynn Collins ("The Merchant of Venice") has been tapped for a role in Warner Bros.' "Il Mare."Keanu ReevesKeanu Reeves, Sandra BullockSandra Bullock and Christopher Plummer star in the romantic comedy, helmed by Alejandro Agresti. Lensing is under way in Chicago.Collins begins shooting Random Harvest PicturesRandom Harvest Pictures' "Bronte" this summer in the U.K.

Lynn Collins: it's been her crush on the bard that's driven her to the boards - Movie Heat - Brief Article - Interview - Biography

Reached in Luxembourg, where she's shooting The Merchant of Venice, Lynn Collins is frenetic. Her hotel telephone is on the fritz, she's exhausted, and she's late for dinner with Al Pacino.

Born in Houston, the twentysomething actress spent six years in Singapore, where she racked up her first credit: Mrs. Claus in a Christmas pageant. But it was back in Texas, where Collins landed the part of Ophelia in a high school production of Hamlet and "wrapped my mouth around Shakespeare," that she fell in love with acting: "I was done. I knew it was for me."

So it was on to Juilliard for the "avid astrologer and tarot reader," and then to a blink-and-you-miss-it movie debut in last year's Down With Love. She played a jilted lover in February's 50 First Dates, a role she reprises in this month's Jennifer Garner-Mark Ruffalo romantic comedy, 13 Going on 30. "I'm getting used to being the girl who gets screwed over," Collins jokes. Still, it's Merchant that she really itches to talk about. In Michael Radford's adaptation of one of the Bard's most controversial works, Collins plays Portia to Pacino's Shylock and Jeremy Irons's Antonio. "Portia is so challenging! I'm donned as a man half the time, and her monologues are brutal. But I like getting dirt under my fingernails. And, God, I've been getting guidance from Al Pacino. But I try not to hog him. He needs to be shared."

Stella's column

ACTOR KEANU REEVES, best known for "The Matrix" films and currently seen in the thriller "Constantine," was in town on Sunday to scout locations for his new Warner Bros. romance titled "IL Mare," co-starring Sandra Bullock.

Reeves and movie director Alejandro Agresti had lunch at the popular Miller's Pub on South Wabash, where they are planning to film a few scenes for the movie sometime in May. Bullock is not expected to be in those particular scenes.

Keanu Reeves Is Constantine

Keanu Reeves Is Constantineby Tim Nasson, Special to 365Gay.com

(Los Angeles) It’s hard to believe that six years has gone by since Neo took the world by storm in the first Matrix movie, and two subsequent sequels. What might be harder to comprehend is that it has been nearly twenty years since the now forty-one year old Keanu Reeves graced the movie-loving world with his bravura performance as the only decent character in a group of kids, one who has killed his girlfriend and proudly shows off the corpse on The River’s Edge.

It was 1989 that the world got the look of the comedic side of Keanu when he played opposite Bill, in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and as one of the brood of kids in Ron Howard’s Parenthood.

With the exception of those films, Reeves remained a monotone, unfunny actor, appearing in forgettable films, until Speed, in 1994, and then fell, again, into less than stellar roles in films such as Johnny Mnemonic, A Walk In the Clouds, Feeling Minnesota and The Devil’s Advocate.

The first time I sat with Reeves was at an impromptu interview that Warner Bros. set up for me while I was in LA covering another movie, Pushing Tin. Their first Matrix was coming out in a couple of weeks, and since I and a few of my colleagues were there, they decided, what the hell? Let’s set up some interviews for The Matrix, I hadn’t even seen the movie when I interviewed Reeves, but was intrigued by him and his decision to star in a movie by the directors of Bound, a lesbian murder mystery.

The scruffy Reeves, back then, in 1999, walked into the suite at The Ritz Carlton in Pasedena wearing a suit, shirt, no tie, and sported a pair of fingernails painted in black polish. I left the interview thinking, this dude has probably made his last film and will never work in Hollywood again.

Who would have guessed that The Matrix, especially after arriving on DVD, would become one of the most talked about movies of the 1990s and turn Reeves into an international superstar?

Fast forward to the present. The second Matrix did very well, the third did fair, at the theatrical box office, (to this day I have not seen any of them in their entirety), yet Keanu is still an A-list actor.

Where did he come from, though, you may ask? "I was born in Lebanon," he answers, when I ask where he was born. Come to find out, his mother was a showgirl, his father a geologist. His parents’ marriage dissolved and it was off to NYC, for him and his mother, and after that, Toronto. All before he was out of high school. It’s hard to imagine Reeves not hitting it big.

"I had a strange upbringing," he says, "But, really, who hasn’t? Who has had the perfect childhood? It’s all what you make of your life that matters," he says.

His newest movie, a sort of combination of two of his previous films, The Devil’s Advocate and The Matrix series, is Constantine. He plays the title character. John Constantine. A man with visions. Half exorcist, half rebel. The devil wants him in hell, but he wants to go to heaven. What a dilemma.

His character in Constantine is a chain smoker. "I guess he smokes too much. Yeah, it's kind of a - I guess it's a character trait that the character has, and I guess he's dealing with a lot and it's a kind of tool to help him numb himself."

Unlike some actors, such as Matt Damon, or Colin Farrell who couldn’t care les about anti-smoking laws in Los Angeles, New York and Boston, Keanu does not light up in the hotel. "Yes, I smoke, but I don’t always need a cigarette in my mouth," he laughs.

Constantine is based on a British comic, yet Reeves explains how he wasn’t forced to use an accent. "I wasn't familiar with the character before I read the script, and when the script came to me, that aspect of the character - being based in London and being English - had changed already. So I wasn't aware of that.

When I read the script and then familiarized myself with the work, I saw that what was important was really the essence of Constantine, and we worked really hard to keep that aspect of it, because it's really what it's all about. That kind of hard-edged, hard-boiled, world-weary cynical, fatalistic, nihilistic, self-interested - with a heart. And I think we did. I mean I hope so. I hope that fans of the comic don't feel that we sabotaged something that is so well loved."

Reeves goes on to explain the philosophical aspects of many of his films, when pressed. "I'll start with Constantine. The aspect for me - I think of it as a kind of secular religiosity.

"The piece itself is using icons and a platform in a kind of Catholic heaven-and-hell, god-and-the-devil, human souls, fighting for those. But I find that the piece itself - Constantine because of the fact that he knows - and I was hoping that these concepts could become a platform that are humanistic, that the journey of this particular hero is hopefully relatable to - even though they're such fantastic characters and situations - that it's still a man trying to figure it out.

"In terms of the other roles, I hope ultimately - not only are they interesting - I think that those kinds of journeys, a hero journey, or Siddartha - these are all kind of seeking aspects of hopefully - that have something of value in terms of - to our lives - that we can take with us - and hopefully in the works that are entertaining and - these kinds of journeys that I think all of us - especially in western traditions - relate to. I think these motifs of seekers, messiahs, of anti-heroes, heroes - all of these aspects are journeys that I think deal with things that we deal with in our day-to-day in a way, and are entertaining.

"They offer up - coming from where do you come from, what are you fighting for . . . and coming into a kind of - I don't mean it in a facile way but into a kind of life. I think they're worthwhile, and if we can make them all kinds of stories, story-telling, that is always couched in this kind of engaging entertaining manner, whether it is a shadow play, a circle, a storyteller, our literature . . . the mediums that we communicate these things often times."

About acting, he reminisces, "I really love it. it's my craft. When I was 15, I went up to my mother and said, is it okay if I'm an actor? She was like - whatever you want, dear. In three weeks I was enrolled in an acting class doing Uta Hagen's Respect For Acting. And acting itself? I think of it as kind of like - and I've heard Anthony Hopkins say this - you learn about doing it, and it's like painting, I would imagine. The craft of it, the skill of it, the way that you work the paint, the way that you can act. The more you do it, the more you know it, and for me, it's what I love. A good day on the set, creating the work, the piece, the collaboration, expression, is a hoot. I love it. I love it. And hopefully it will continue."

How bout another trilogy?"Trilogy," he laughs. "Why stop there? We could have Son of Constantine. And I’ll play him too. CGI. No, but it’s a character just as how it exists in the graphic novel, so I would love to play him again. Who knows? I mean, February 18th, probably by the 30th we’ll know whether there will be a sequel."

©365Gay.com 2005

Smith has no Matrix regrets

01/03/2005 - 14:27:09

Will Smith harbours no regrets over his decision to turn down the role of Neo in The Matrix trilogy - because Keanu Reeves was "born" to play the part.

The Independence Day heart-throb is relieved when he watches Reeves starring in the sci-fi movies, because he fears he would not have done the role justice.

The 36-year-old says: "That's the role Keanu was born to play. When I watch the movie and I see the choices he made, there are a hundred occasions when I think: 'I would have messed that up.'"