When Keanu Reeves, then 24, visited the Toronto International Film Festival in 1988, it represented something of a homecoming for the young Canadian actor who’d spent his teen years in the city before heading off to Los Angeles. Playing the title role in Ron Nyswaner’s The Prince of Philadelphia, Reeves was still relatively new when it came to promoting his work — and himself — as he curled up on a couch at the Four Seasons Hotel, complaining of a cold as he met with the Toronto Star.
Having first made a name for himself in dramatic films like 1986’s River’s Edge, Reeves said he hoped that the comedy/drama Prince, in which he played a kid who kidnaps his own father in order to score a ransom that would help him escape town, would allow him to begin to show his lighter side, even though he insisted he shared little with the movie’s title character. But Nyswaner disagreed, telling the Los Angeles Times that Reeves was “like a Chinese menu — he’ll give you a half-dozen different readings. But the real Keanu is a lot like the character in the film despite his refusal to see any resemblance.”
Back then, Reeves — who’s returning to the Toronto fest this year for the world premiere of Aziz Ansari’s comedy, Good Fortune, in which he plays an angel who engineers a body swap between Ansari and Seth Rogen — was less interested in talking about himself. He also wasn’t prepared to make any bold predictions about the direction of his own career. Telling the Star that he’d just read an article about how James Dean and Elvis Presley affected fashion, he said, “Well, somehow, I don’t think I’m going to do that. I don’t think I’m going to have that big an imprint on the world.”
In retrospect, of course, that’s proven something of an understatement.
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