The 1997 movie Keanu Reeves was sure would ruin him: “If I do this film, I will not come back up”
Keanu Reeves has made many questionable decisions in his time, like that terrible British accent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula or, well, all of Johnny Mnemonic.
The actor is beloved, but he’s no Daniel Day-Lewis. Reeves has always done best in a big role, one that puts him front and centre and allows his charm to shine; look at The Matrix or John Wick. He knows how to command an audience, even if the more technical side of his skills can be a little rusty at times.
Still, there have been multiple times in his career where he has found himself at a crossroads, not sure where to go to guarantee proper success. Hollywood is an unpredictable business, and even when you’re as well-known as Reeves, you can still find yourself struggling to find work. When he appeared in 2008’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, for example, he was left facing bad reviews and the threat of not making another big movie.
“Sometimes I call that ‘The Day My Career Stood Still’… You’re always fighting for a career,” he once said.
Sure, Reeves has made some bad decisions, then, but he has also been smart enough to turn a few absolute shockers down. The actor knew that a certain sequel was destined to bomb, and back in the ‘90s, when it seemed like he should’ve been taking every chance he could get while at the height of his fame, he turned down Speed 2: Cruise Control.
Despite the success of Speed, in which he’d appeared alongside Sandra Bullock and Dennis Hopper back in 1994, the actor was concerned when he heard about plans for the sequel. “When I was offered Speed 2, Jan [de Bont] came to Chicago and so did Sandra, and they said, ‘You’ve got to do this’. And I said, ‘I read the script and I can’t. It’s called Speed, and it’s on a cruise ship’.” He makes a good point.
Speed 2 follows Bullock’s character from the first film as she holidays on a cruise ship with her boyfriend, only for a terrorist, played by Willem Dafoe, to hijack the boat. The movie was widely panned, and to this day, it remains one of the worst sequels ever made. It was a truly unnecessary endeavour, one that clearly wasn’t creative enough if it had to rely on a cruise ship as its setting.
Reeves knew it was going to be bad, and he didn’t want to risk the fall. Despite being offered the hefty sum of $12million, the actor turned it down. “And I told [William Mechanic from Fox Filmed Entertainment], ‘If I do this film, I will not come back up. You guys will send me to the bottom of the ocean, and I will not make it back up again’. I really felt like I was fighting for my life.”
So, Reeves instead took some time to appear on stage, playing Hamlet in a production in Canada that earned him mixed reviews. It might not have been a flawless run for the actor, but he needed a change, and he’s forever glad that he did that instead of Speed 2: Cruise Control.
