If you didn't think you could love Keanu Reeves more, wait until you hear Academy Award winner
Octavia Spencer's sweet story about the star.
Throughout his career, Reeves has earned a reputation for being one of the nicest guys
in the film industry, whether he's quietly giving up his seat on the subway or helping
fellow passengers on a flight forced to make an emergency landing ahead of its final destination.
As it turns out, Reeves, who has seen a recent career resurgence thanks to intense action
movies like the John Wick franchise as well as charming cameos in romantic comedies like
Always Be My Maybe, is also super nice to fellow actors in need, no matter the situation.
During a socially distanced interview on The Graham Norton Show, the host, who is well
known for drawing incredible stories out of his guests, asked the Hidden Figures star
to tell her "Keanu Reeves story," and Spencer happily obliged.
As Spencer told Norton, her Reeves experience was quite early in her career. When Spencer
was heading to grab a script for an audition, she was dressed... pretty informally, which
she revealed to Norton years after the fact.
"It was about 25 years ago, The Matrix had just come out. I was on my way to pick up
a script to read for an audition."
Though this story seems innocuous at first, it definitely gets weirder from there.
As Spencer revealed to Norton, she was running errands while pretty dressed-down, wearing
a worn, see-through t-shirt, sweatpants, and no underwear. And her outfit's not the only
thing that wasn't looking totally presentable that day.
"My car hadn't been washed because I always parked underneath the trees, and there was
bird crap all over the back of it."
According to Spencer, her car unexpectedly broke down in what she described as a posh
area of Beverly Hills, leaving her stranded in the street with cars honking all around
her. Making matters worse, people at an outdoor cafe could see the scene unfolding, but no
one helped her. That is, until Keanu.
"Hi, I'm Keanu Reeves."
According to Spencer, help arrived suddenly in the form of a striking man in sunglasses
and a motorcycle helmet, whom she immediately could tell was Keanu Reeves, in the flesh.
While she was, quote, "freaking out" about the celebrity encounter, superstar Reeves
humbly offered his assistance.
"I thought he was going to get into the car, I got behind the car to push. He said, 'No,
I'm going to push you out of the street, you get in.'”
Pushing the car out of the street, Keanu didn't just help a stranger out — he also set an
example, just by being himself. According to Spencer,
"When people saw it was Keanu Reeves helping me, everybody came down to help."
"Now I know what it feels like to be completely starstruck."
While Octavia Spencer may have been having a bad day when she first met Keanu Reeves,
the past 25 years have been plenty kind to both of them. In the years since their first
encounter, both of them have established themselves as two of Hollywood's biggest stars.
After playing a series of small roles in both film and television, Spencer's biggest breakthrough
came in 2011 with The Help, a story which chronicles the lives of Black maids in the
South in the heavily segregated era of the 1960s. Ultimately, Spencer won an Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role, and in the years since, she's appeared
in other high-profile projects like Ma, Hidden Figures, Get on Up, and more.
Meanwhile, Reeves, who rose to fame thanks to films like Point Break, The Matrix, and
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure in the 1990s, has experienced a renaissance in recent years,
blowing audiences away with his high-octane stunts in the John Wick films. He also recently
wrapped filming on the long-awaited fourth Matrix film — where he'll reprise his leading
role as Neo — and has promised audiences that the sequel will be well worth the wait.
Whether Reeves is playing a wronged hitman or spoofing his own self-image on screen,
you can't help but root for him, which makes it all the more rewarding when you hear about
this humble star taking time out of his day to do a good deed for a stranger. It's also
a lucky circumstance that Spencer's career took off, or we might never have heard this
story at all.
Reeves' two huge upcoming sequels, The Matrix 4 and John Wick: Chapter 4, are currently
scheduled for release in December 2021 and May 2022, respectively.
You can see Spencer in The Witches, which is now streaming exclusively on HBO Max.
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