Keanu Reeves once again demonstrated the reason that fans argue he’s Hollywood’s most genuine, thoughtful A-lister. He did so by offering up a simple but profound response to one of life’s most difficult questions: What happens after we die?
“I know that the ones who love us will miss us,” the famously private 54-year-old actor said.
Reeves’ comment on death was remarkable given it came during the course of an otherwise light-hearted conversation with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” last week. The two had been talking about Reeves doing stunts for “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” and starring in a new “Bill and Ted” movie.
But the chat unexpectedly turned to mortality, prompting Colbert to ask, almost off-handedly, “What do you think happens when we die, Keanu Reeves?”
Reeves’ response may have struck a chord, especially with fans, because of his own experience with heartbreak and death.
Click here if you’re having trouble viewing this video on a mobile device.
Reeves’ father abandoned his wife and children when Reeves was a toddler; the actor described his relationship with his father as “full of pain and woe,” according to People.
In 1993, Reeves’ best friend, River Phoenix, died of a drug overdose at age 23. Seven years later, after “The Matrix” became a global phenomenon and turned Reeves into a film superstar, the actor and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, lost their baby girl in a stillborn birth. While the grief proved too much for their relationship, Reeves and Syme stayed friends. But tragedy struck again when Syme died in a car accident two years later.
Reeves opened up about living with such losses in a 2006 interview with Parade magazine.
“Grief changes shape, but it never ends,” he told Parade. “People have a misconception that you can deal with it and say, ‘It’s gone, and I’m better.’ They’re wrong. When the people you love are gone, you’re alone.
“All you can do is hope that grief will be transformed and, instead of feeling pain and confusion, you will be together again in memory, that there will be solace and pleasure there, not just loss.”
Reeves’ response to Colbert quickly became a viral sensation, in part because death usually is not a popular topic for discussion on late-night talk shows.
Reeves has become the subject of viral moments before, as when he was stranded in Bakersfield in March after his United Express flight between San Francisco and Los Angeles had to make an emergency landing. Reeves was videotaped by other passengers, helping the group to figure out how to catch a van to take them to Los Angeles.
Reeves also turns up stories that show him acting friendly, modest, mildly amused or detached from his own fame. Indeed, such stories are compiled in online lists that come with headlines like “Proof that Keanu Reeves Is Basically The Nicest Human Being Ever.”
Reeves was characteristically modest, self-deprecating and amusing when he and Colbert began their conversation about the actor performing stunts for “John Wick 3.”
The death talk amazingly came after the two began discussing the outlandish plot for “Bill and Ted Face the Music.” Reeves shared that the titular characters of the series, which first made him famous in the late 1980s, face pressure to write “the song that was supposed to unite the world and bring peace and everything.”
Reeves explained that things get even more stressful when the goofy pair learn that the song they must write in 80 minutes is necessary to “save the universe.” If they fail, life as we know it will be over, he added.
“So you’re facing your own morality and the mortality of all existence,” Colbert said before taking a slightly more somber tone to ask the difficult question about what happens after death.
Reeves’ response left Colbert silent for a few moments. The host was clearly moved, leaving him to finally reach over to Reeves to shake his hand and remind audiences to catch the actor in “John Wick 3,” which opens in theaters this week.
