“My god, this is audacious!”: the only movie that made Keanu Reeves “fucking moist”
There are endless reasons that can convince an actor to sign on for a movie, but Keanu Reeves has to be in rare company when he agreed then and there to play a role before he’d even read the script based entirely on moistness.
On and offscreen, he’s never been the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve and bears his emotions to the world, although part of that, in the former case, at least, might be down to the fact that he’s never really convinced anyone that he’s got the dramatic range to emote to the required levels.
There’s something wonderful about Reeves’ stardom, because he’s been accused of being a bad actor since the 1980s, and yet, he remains as popular as ever. Nobody spends four decades as a household name and in-demand performer without having something special about them, and it also helps that he’s one of Hollywood’s most beloved names.
Action cinema has been his stock in trade, and films like Point Break, Speed, The Matrix, and the John Wick franchise have ensured his position as one of the genre’s all-time greats. However, his prowess as a thespian often goes unnoticed or unsung, because it’s much easier to make fun of his accent in Dracula than it is to appreciate the quiet intensity of his against-type turn in Sam Raimi’s The Gift.
No period better sums up Reeves’ eclectic approach to his craft than the 19 months between the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s gothic fantasy and Jan De Bont’s high-concept thrill ride. In the interim, he appeared in four wildly diverse features, amassing six credits between November 1992 and June 1994.
There was Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearean adaptation, Much Ado About Nothing, the wretched dramedy, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, an uncredited cameo as ‘Ortiz the Dog Boy’ in the black comedy, Freaked, and top billing in the legendary Bernardo Bertolucci’s drama, Little Buddha.
Being headhunted by one of cinema’s all-time greats came as a surprise, and all it took was a single meeting with Bertolucci for Reeves to commit. “We met in a New York City hotel, and Bernardo told me the story of the script,” Reeves explained to ID. “He spoke about the lamas he had met and how he had come from a non-religious background, a disbelieving aspect, and he felt he had met religious men and they infected him, you know?”
He hadn’t even laid eyes on a script, but his mind was made up, especially when the moistness made itself known. “And as he told me the story, I was crying, I was very excited to be there,” he recalled. “When I said I was crying, I didn’t, like, drench my jeans, but I was fucking moist on it because it was very sweet and moving, and I was affected by seeing this man affected.”
The narrative, following a Buddhist monk who believes a young American child is his spiritual teacher reincarnated, struck a nerve with Reeves, all thanks to Bertolucci’s impassioned pitch: “I was thinking, my god, this is audacious!” It might have sounded that way coming from the director’s mouth, but the star’s moistness was all for nought when all Little Buddha had to show for it at the end of the day was a solid-if-unspectacular critical and commercial response, and a Razzie nomination for co-star Chris Isaak.
