The director whose belief changed Keanu Reeves’ career
There’s no doubt that Keanu Reeves has been one of the most significant action movie stars of the last 30 years or so. With phenomenal efforts in The Matrix and John Wick, Reeves has established himself as one of the leading players in shootouts, death-defying stunts and close-quarters combat.
While we now recignise Reeves as a genuine action movie star, it wasn’t always that way, and it was only when 1991’s Point Break came around that the world saw the potential that Reeves had with a gun in his hand chasing down bad guys. In that sense, perhaps Kathryn Bigelow’s film was the most important of Reeves’ career.
Point Break starred Reeves alongside Patrick Swayze, Lori Petty and Gary Busey and tells of an undercover agent called Johnny Utah (Reeves) who infiltrated a group of surfers who moonlight as a bank-robbing gang called The Dead Presidents. Meanwhile, he develops a unique relationship with the group’s leader, Bodhi (Swayze).
Bigelow played a big part in getting Reeves to become the action star we know him as today, but she was not always the first choice to be the director. Ridley Scott had been attached to the movie at first and had considered both Charlie Sheen and Matthew Broderick as the lead actors, and Johnny Depp had also been touted at one point.
Eventually, though, Bigelow got the job and worked on the script with her husband, James Cameron. However, Bigelow still had quite a task on her hands in convincing the production studio that Keanu Reeves was the man for the lead role job. After all, he’d never been in an action film before and was mostly known for his efforts in Bill and Ted.
During an interview with Premiere, James Cameron once explained the belief that his wife had in Reeves, saying, “We had this meeting where the Fox executives were going, ‘Keanu Reeves in an action film? Based on what? Bill & Ted?’ They were being so insulting. But she insisted he could be an action star.”
Bigelow stood her ground on Reeves, and eventually, the studio heads took a risk on him. And what a result it turned out to be. Reeves delivered a performance that proved he was always meant to be an action hero and, with Bigelow and Swayze, made one of the best action movies of all time. We know Reeves as Neo and John Wick today, but without Kathryn Bigelow, he might still just be Ted.
