The actor who thought he would leave Stanley Kubrick “broken” if they had worked together
If there’s one thing to know about Stanley Kubrick is that he was a meticulous creator of masterpieces.
One of the most beloved directors of al time, Kubrick was famous for being extremely dedicated to the details. His intense horror thriller The Shining is the perfect example of this.
Kubrick famously had a scale model of The Overlook Hotel created before shooting so that he could accurately decide how to light the exterior shots. He asked Jack Nicholson to look down the barrel of the camera for nano seconds during particular scenes to unsettle audiences, and regrettably left Shelley Duvall a shaking mess after punishing her during the filming to get the right energy for Wendy. Kubrick does not miss a beat.
However, there is one actor who feels certain he could push him over the edge with the amount of takes he wants. Keanu Reeves isn’t the most widely lauded actor of his time, with many of his performances being slated for a certain wooden feel. Now, that’s quite a harsh take on the star. Sure, he delivers a certain surfer drawl for every role, but Reeves has found himself starring in some of the most successful movies ever made.
“I’ve never felt underestimated by my peers,” Reeves once told New York Post. “By critics, sometimes. I try not to [read reviews], but I’m just such a sucker for that. It’s the bane of the actor: You’ve got to check in with what’s going on around you. It’s just the nature of the beast.”
Starring in successful movies isn’t luck, it comes from dedication and that is one thing Reeves has in abundance. One of his most profitable and memorable movies allowed him to take this dedication to the next level. The Matrix is one of the most beloved franchises in modern cinema and it gave the actor the chance to indulge his grandest love: takes.
“Those films afforded me the chance to do, like, 40 takes,” Reeves told The Guardian in 2010. “And you don’t oftentimes get to do that. On Henry’s Crime, it was, like, ‘Take three? Wow!'”
The love of many takes Reeves be;lieved would have finally got kubrick to snap. “After take 400, Kubrick would’ve been, [adopts grizzled Brooklyn accent] ‘All right, cut,’” Reeves said. “And I’d be, like, ‘Stanley, can I do one more?’ ‘Whaaat?’ ‘Look, I know I’m just drinking this glass of water, but I think I can find another side to this. Let’s just do one more, OK?’ ‘Arrrgh, OK, Reeves.’ You know what? I would’ve broken Kubrick. ‘Please, sir, can I have some more?’ ‘Take 600. All you gotta do is walk across the road.’ ‘Come on, Stanley, one more!’”
It’s not an unfounded thought, but Kubrick did love a few takes, himself. During one famous scene in The Shining, Kubrick asked for 148 of them. “Actors are sometimes undisciplined enough not to go home and go to sleep at night and learn their lines, and they go out,” Kubrick once said. “They cannot act without knowing dialogue. If you have to think about anything when you’re acting you cannot work on the emotion. It’s happened on every film. There’s really not much you can do about it.”
Sadly, we never got the chance to see whether Reeves would have pushed kubrick to breaking point, one suspects it would be more likely that the steely director would have whipped the actor in shape.
