Keanu Reeves names the greatest comedy actor of all time: “Very impactful for my worldview”
In amongst all the chatter that he’s spent the last four decades succeeding in the face of being rubbish at his job, what often goes unmentioned is that Keanu Reeves has some seriously underrated comedy chops.
Yes, the genre gave him his big break when he played the dimly endearing Theodore ‘Ted’ Logan in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which may have done him more harm than good when people seemed to forget that he was an actor playing a character, but he’s always been understatedly funny.
Playing an exaggerated version of himself in Always Be My Maybe allowed Reeves to cut loose and steal every scene that he was in, subverting his ‘nice guy’ persona to play a preening prima donna, and he made an excellent foil for Gene Hackman’s signature brand of stern in The Replacements.
You wouldn’t necessarily place him in the leading role of a slapstick, gross-out, or scattergun-style comedy movie, since there hasn’t been any evidence to support that he’s got that particular approach buried anywhere in his locker, but his natural affability lends itself perfectly to easy-going laughs.
There’s something vaguely ironic about Reeves, an enduring beacon of positivity and wholesomeness in an often dark and dingy place like Hollywood, saluting the merits of a comic and actor who thrived on pushing boundaries, shattering taboos, and leaving no foul-mouthed stone unturned, but he had his reasons.
“For me, there’s like the George Carlin before I met George Carlin, and then working with George Carlin and knowing him after,” the star explained. “From the legacy of his thought and comedy as a performer, he was one of the greatest of all time, and very impactful for my worldview and humour.”
Of course, Carlin played Rufus in the first two Bill & Ted movies, which helped introduce him to a brand new generation of audiences, but the trilogy-capper spent so long in development hell that he’d long since passed away by the time Face the Music finally went into production in 2019.
The five-time Grammy winner was also one of his era’s most influential comics, inspiring everyone from Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart to Steven Wright and Chris Rock, with his performance in the children’s TV series Shining Time Station also making him a two-time Emmy-nominated actor.
Carlin appeared in over a dozen features, and since his vulgar, cynical, and frequently furious stage persona was nothing like the kind, quiet, thoughtful, and introspective man that the people he worked with knew behind the scenes, he was as great an actor on the stage as he was a scene-stealer on the screen.
