Keanu Reeves Dished On His Toronto Roots From Ice Hockey To How He Got His Start In Acting
Keanu Reeves opened up about his childhood in Toronto and revealed how his career all started in the city.
The 58-year-old Canadian actor got real about his Toronto roots and his journey to becoming a household name on the podcast SmartLess, hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.
Reeves recounted moving to Toronto when he was around 7 years old and listed the several schools he attended, including Jesse Ketchum Junior, North Toronto Collegiate Institute, De La Salle College and a performing arts high school – which he got kicked out of.
"The story of my past is obviously the story of my mother. She ran away from home when she was like 15, and she ended up going to Beirut, Lebanon," said Reeves.
Reeves shared that his mother met his father in Lebanon, where he came about and "long story short," after a "bunch of stuff happened," he, his mom and his sister ended up moving to a house in Canada.
Like a typical Canadian child, Reeves said he was a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and "played a lot of ice hockey as a kid," and recently, he was even dubbed as "Canadian royalty" in an interview with ET Canada's Keshia Chanté.
Reeves grew up in Toronto, and at the ripe age of 15, he says he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
"My mother says I came to her when I was 15 and asked if it was okay If I'm an actor," said Reeves.
"She said, 'Yes, of course, son, whatever you want to do,' and then I started, so I was pretty self-motivated and enrolled in a theatre art program."
Reeves enrolled at Leah Posluns Theatre, where he played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet and even ended up scoring an agent.
He took acting classes and was doing the "Stanislavski" and voice work at 17 years old, all while holding a massive "respect" for acting.
From there, Reeves booked some commercials and managed to sell some cornflakes and Coca-Cola, but Hollywood was waiting for him.
Reeves said he got into his first car at 20 and drove down to Hollywood, where he was asked to change his name the day he arrived in Tinseltown.
"I drove down to Hollywood, and of course, when I got here, they wanted to change my name ... They were like, 'Keanu, it's too ethnic.'"
"I remember they told me, and I was like stomping up and down along the beach in Santa Monica going, 'What the f*ck?'"
Reeves ended up trying out the name K.C., the initials of his first and middle name, but he wouldn't respond to it in auditions, so he went back and told his agents he couldn't change it.
It looks like Reeves made the right call considering most people know The Matrix and the John Wick actor pretty well nowadays, and he even has an antimicrobial fungi killer named after him.
