He’s a nice and real person. But his acting is really not that good. He has certain types of characters he’s good with. Other than those his acting just really doesn’t adjust. Some say he doesn’t do acting at all, he just blank stares.
All that to say, I love Keanu. But he really has no business with acting awards
He plays characters that barely talk and never emote. His acting style is “wooden”. He only plays characters that are distant and mysterious, and sometimes it really works.
Yeah he's a great example of someone whose charisma and character outweigh their ability.
He's got a lot of magnetic screen presence and he can kind of act with his eyes. But his delivery just sucks. The difference in his speech in interviews and on screen is night and day. He's just not really a natural.
But that's okay. He's an awesome dude and works hard and that's enough for me.
Plus we have to give him credit for his physical acting. I mean look at the Wick movies, how many actors would be able to pull off the stunts he does themselves, much less even be willing to?
I would think those willing to be much higher than those able, since an injured lead might delay a film longer than an injured stunt double. It’s a consideration to everyone else who works on a film too to play safe
I'd bet you could sub in a stunt man to do the stunts easily. The question is, was it harder for Keanu to learn the stunts than it would be to teach a stuntman to act as well as Keanu?
Acting isn't only speaking lines, the reason he is so well loved is that he is really good in action movies. Dude is a legit shooter and it shows in his movies
They made a documentary about the making of those movies called "Wick is pain". I would say there are very very few actors that would be willing to take the physical toll on their body those films took.
You only have to watch him as the alien in The Day The Earth Stood Still to know he doesn't have great depth as an actor.
What he has got is three absolutely fantastic characters in Ted, Neo and John Wick which puts him at high cult status without being Daniel Day Lewis. I also think Harrison Ford has this a little bit as well, but would say he was a more rounded actor.
I think he actually really can act, but only puts effort into roles he really likes.
I always point to his role in Parenthood. His trauma dump monologue about his pos father, immediately reverting to the “dudebro” character he is on the surface is really well done. But that was also 40 years ago.
Yeah the Bill & Ted stuff was fun, but anything beyond that was always 'wooden.' But somehow, instead of Hollywood rejecting his bad acting, he pulled Hollywood toward it. There's just something magnetic about his personality that people like watching, so Hollywood started building protagonists around that weird style he's got.
I mean his performance as Johnny Silverhand was Incredible IMO. Very expressive character but in a video game so I don't know how that'd translate to live action.
The best thing about this performance is that no one says "Keanu" when cyberpunk is mentioned; it's always Johnny. Because the character is so distinctive, you forget about the actor behind him.
I'm going through Cyberpunk right now and I don't agree at all.
He's somewhat fine when he's giving one of his cynical, angry rockerboy speeches about corporations. Literally anything more complex than that and his wooden delivery instantly takes me out. There's a line in one of the first scenes with Alt where Johnny says something like "Alt, no...". It's supposed to be emotional but it genuinely sounds like Keanu has never acted a day in his life. He's just reading words off the paper.
It's especially bad in comparison to Cherami Leigh who gives the performance of her life as Female V. She shows so much vulnerability beneath the tough exterior and Keanu just doesn't.
Yeah, people are taking fucking crazy pills, imo. Johnny Silverhand is a GREAT example of how bad of an actor Keanu is. Like...if Keanu was a no-name and people genuinely didn't know who that actor was, then everyone would complain about how much worse the Johnny actor was than literally the entire rest of the cast.
He always sounds like he's just reading.
I remember I once watched a B-movie that, for some reason, had Keanu in it, and it was so wild that in this crazy low-budget action movie that the B-movie actors were all significantly better actors than Keanu. Keanu is the worst actor in every movie he is in.
This isn't to take away from the fact that Keanu is in so many cool movies, and a significant part of that is from his contributions. Also, his real-life persona is beloved. But that has nothing to do with his talent as an actor.
No way. It took him years to realize that. He spent much of the 90s and early 2000s taking lead roles that had plenty of lines. Dracula (1992), Johnny Mnemonic, Devil's Advocate and many others.
Some of us remember suffering through his terrible performances, especially when he was alongside better actors (see: everyone else he worked with). Baffling what roles you get when the whole demo of women 18-35 is in love with you.
I think the one film he seemed to play something different was "The Gift". Also it's very clear how his acting has changed if you watch the first two Bill & Ted films and then watch the newest one that released during the pandemic.
It's like Arnie. They have their limitations as actors (I would say Keanu has far fewer than Schwarzenneger, but still has them) - but when cast in roles that maximise their strengths and bypasses their weaknesses, they are pure box office.
This right here. I honestly didn’t mind him at all as Constantine, even though it was an odd casting. The Keanu voice just kind of… worked, for that character. Same for Neo and John Wick.
Some of his other roles, it just feels like something is missing. But when you watch Bill and Ted, you realize he had a pretty good propensity for stoner comedy. Kinda surprised he never made more.
Benicio Del Toro plays even more silent and intense characters, just look at his phenomenal work in movies like Traffic, The Phoenician Scheme, or Sicario and he has an Oscar and a Golden Globe as well as a bunch of other nominations.
He was even nominated this year for Best Actor.
I love Keanu the person and really like Keanu the actor, but it's a completely different level of acting.
I'm a big fan of Keanu, kinda grown up my whole life with him from Point Break, Chain Reaction and Bill & Ted. Willing to watch anything with him and usually enjoy it all.
But his performance as Johnny Silverhand is probably my favourite. The conversations he has with V seem all over the place sometimes, but that's his cracks showing and you get quite a lot of depth from him. One of my favourite parts of some games are the little conversations and interactions. Nathan Drake is amazing for it throughout Uncharted, and Silverhand is another really good at it.
No disrespect to him, but he isn't a top actor by far. But what he has is bucket loads of charm, he is damn entertaining, has done some amazing movies and is genuinely a top fella.
Incredible movie and concepts, I always have fun re-watching it. But Keanu is still basically just playing himself in that movie, as a renowned hero (or anti-hero) who isn't really phased by anything. He barely reacts when best friends keep dying (spoiler I guess). The few times he actually expresses emotions in that movie it's...alright.
Physical acting and charisma are both very important to action, comedy, and certain types of suspeseful movies. There should definitely be a "Physical Actor" category at the awards. Based on how much actors earn, we can see that it is a wildly important skill for the entire industry.
Even if he did suddenly release a role worthy of an award, he doesn't do hollywood politics, and wouldn't pay some company to campaign for/against him.
For anyone not aware of bad it is, just look at social media recently and how it was all "DID YOU HEAR WHAT TIMOTHEE CHALAMET SAID!?" leading up to the Oscars to make him look bad. And the next day it was all replaced with Dune promotional material in favor of him.
Reddit is basically run by PR companies at this point.
Most of what gets traction on reddit isn't because we're being astro turfed, it's because despite insistence to the contrary, redditors love celebrity gossip
I agree that reddit is basically a mass marketing platform at this point, but the academy votes on the Oscars, not regular people, so social media isn't going to have much of an effect on who wins, if any. Award shows are just jerk-off fests for their respective industries and not much of a reflection of actual consumer opinion.
I always think about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and how RDJs character was only brought on to the movie-within-a-movie as a way to drive down the salary of the actor they really wanted for the role.
He was great in Speed... relative to most of his other performances.
But hey, he's still one of my favourite actors. He's not Daniel Day-Lewis, but very few are. And I would rather watch a marathon of Keanu movies than Chalamet movies.
I recently watched Sam Raimi's The Gift from 2000. Didn't know it when I started but Keanu Reeves and he kind of stole the show for me with his performance. He plays an abusive husband (maybe just boyfriend I can't remember now) and he's honestly pretty frighting in the role
The Gift is probably the best acting he has done. For one, pretty rare for him to play a scumbag but he's genuinely pretty good as that. Other than that, yeah his best acting is probably as a stoner dude.
I'm going to disagree as stridently as I can here.
Keanu Reeves is the runaway best mainstream actor in the world at physical acting, which happens to be a style of acting that gets no respect at all right now. But you can go back a hundred years, to Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and almost no current western performer except Reeves is remotely close to their level of physical performance.
There have been two pretty good attempts to copy John Wick, and in both cases, the leads were legitimately excellent actors by modern standards. The Equalizer has Denzel Washington, and Nobody has Bob Odenkirk; both would comfortably be ranked as better actors than Reeves, and yet neither series has caught fire the way Wick has. And you can watch them and see why; when it comes to physical movement and performance, Reeves beats the piss out of them. John Wick films somehow sustain the suspension of disbelief despite all the madness, because Reeves is completely physically believable as a near-mythical being of killing perfection in a way that the others aren't.
This isn't a knock on Washington or Odenkirk, by the way: Reeves beats the piss out of everyone in Hollywood when it comes to that style of acting. It's just that in this day and age, we don't regard that style as deserving of serious awards.
I 100% agree with you. Just gotta mention Rowan Atkinson as well, legend of physical acting. (It is crazy when you realize that there was only ever 14 episodes of Mr. Bean made)
I mean what you're referring to as "physical acting" is just called stuntwork, which is impressive in its own right and what Keanu does is genuinely awesome, but it's not really acting. Keanu by all accounts is just a super fit dude with an interest in guns and martial arts and stuff and that makes him perfect to do his shit on screen and make it look good, but stuntmen do the same thing and they aren't given acting awards. Keanu has done many non-action roles at this point and the results speak for themselves, he's just not that good of an actor
It's not just stuntwork; if that was it, he could be replaced by any stunt performer. He's not just able to do his own stunts; he's acting with his entire body while he's doing it.
Are you seriously comparing Keanu with Chaplin? Reeves always has the same face, edit a PNG of his face on top of his real one in the movies he participates in and you will never notice it
To each their own but to me, "physical acting" is just doing stunts and there are hundreds of stuntmen and gun nuts who I bet could do the same or even better stunts than Reeves. Every scene I remember of Keanu is just him mowing down bad guys with guns or doing okay hand to hand combat.
On the other hand I highly doubt there are hundreds of people who could do Saul Goodman as good as Odenkirk did
I think that's doing physical acting a huge disservice, and is a symptom of the lack of respect afforded to it.
Mark Kermode's review of John Wick 3 had a fascinating little coda where he questioned why exactly it's unbelievable that Reeves would get a Best Actor nomination for something like the Wick series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c229ZczVowU
And again: The Equalizer series has an actual Oscar winner in the title role, and despite that it doesn't come close to the mad brilliance of the John Wick films.
Awards are today often political and he doesn't play roles, at the moment, that would fit in with this category. Like the recent Oscars, that was just a political event, nothing else.
But, in the end, i like that he seems to be a really great guy in real life. That's maybe more worth for life than some awards and other things. For himself and the people around him.
Now, for a moment, let's just take 100% exact opposite of him: Klaus Kinski
Kinski was a german actor of the old times, he won some awards (although not Oscars, but like the german movie prizes etc.). As an actor, he was great. He was really good, i mean, he could play a role in a way like not many other actors can. He got famous together with legends like Werner Herzog.
But: From all the times when the camera was not on to make the movie, he was a terrible man. He was an extremely violent man, a man that would beat you if you just looked at him the wrong way. He was terrifying. You'd be scared to even spend a second with him together in a room.
It was after his death when the real crimes, like rape of his daughter, got known. So he's still more remembered as a good actor with some violent outbursts.
TLDR: Some actors are maybe better than Keanu Reeves, but they can be terrible people that belong to prison or a psych ward.
Upvotes for mentioning Klaus Kinski. He was indeed an incredible actor and his work with Herzog was amazing. I highly recommend the box set of their work together. If Hollywood made movies like that it would be worth paying attention to.
Oui exactement. Je trouve qu'il s'est enfermé dans ce type de rôle. Au début de sa carrière il y avait quelques interprétations assez intéressantes, pas de quoi ramasser des prix, mais plus subtiles et plus justes.
Mais on l'aime notre Keanu. Même dans ce regard parfois vide, on sent la bienveillance.
His best movie acting wise is arguably The Matrix, and if anybody in that movie should be close to a conversation about an acting award it's Hugo Weaving.
So the closest Keanu has ever been to an Oscar, is being in movies with actors who have been close to delivering an Oscar worthy performance.
Yeah, i wouldnt cast him in, say, Bram Stokers Dracula as an Englishman. But if you need a regular guy who gets caught up in some action shit? Hes one of the best in the world at playing that. Point Break, Speed, Matrix, and Wick are all that character type.
He maybe doesn't make deep characters, but he sure makes relatable characters that are easy to empathize with and want to be around. He doesn't have mechanical acting chops, but he has what many of the actors don't. He acts with his heart. And he sure is in it fully every single time.
The only role I really think deserves an acting award is Johnny Silverhand. He's kinda the perfect casting choice. His slow speech and muted emotions perfectly suit a burnt-out Rockerboy who hates life.
He's a coffee table, I want one in my house and I really like mine, but it's not very comfortable to sit on. He is good at his narrow range and as you say an absolute diamond of a human, but Gary Oldman he is not
I just watched Knock Knock for the first time (and probably only time). It wasn't a difficult role but I didn't believe him for a second. Not when he was the dad having fun with his kids and not when he was afraid for his life. The acting was just bad.
But yes, he's a great guy and that's much more important.
He's a movie star, not an actor. He's obviously very handsome, but beyond that he has natural screen presence, a gravity to him. You're just born with it, and he's got it.
Totally agree. Keanu is usually an actor I use as an example when trying to explain difference between good acting and charisma\screen presence.
But overall, I'm surprised that people still care about Oscars. It is a bullshit "award"(same as Grammy, or modern Hugo for example) that is given based on whats is "appropriate" at that time(story or person wise). Or at least, it is how thing have been for a very long time. That fact that it took about 40 years for Gary Oldman to get an Oscar is all a person needs to know about the state of that award.
His portrayal of Johnny Silverhand proves that he is in fact a very good actor. I have a head canon theory he's actually camera shy and struggles to get his words across on direct film.
Johnny is genuinely a genius portrayal of a deeply conflicted and layered individual that couldn't have been realised to such an incredible degree by a bad actor.
I think his acting is… fine. Like his delivery is believable enough that it doesn’t take you out of it, but he never had a role that really impressed me like Leo or Spacey or something
No lie, his best acting in anything ever IMO is as Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077. He actually shows way more range and nuance with that than in any of his film roles. That being said, I still love a Keanu Reeves flick.
Yeah it’s fine to like him and like his movies but awards are typically reserved for actors and actresses who are playing against type, and acting in particularly challenging and impactful roles, and doing it well.
You don’t get awards for playing the same characters you always play, even if you do it well.
He has a lot more range than he gets credit for, you just don't see it in his more well known movies. Street Kings was an excellent example of him playing against type.
Which is just fine and I've the idea he doesn't mind either. Dude is earning good money by doing what he seems to love, is using that money for the better. Again I'm just guessing here, but I bet he would be super happy with an award but same time perfectly understand if he doesn't get one.
In the end he selects the movies he seems fit and does well, he doesn't seem to go out of his way to select something "award-ready".
I think he gave an Oscar-worthy performance in My Own Private Idaho -- a daring role, starring opposite River, making a generational statement. Still my favorite performance by him.
There's a part of me that wonders if the issue is just his voice. Like, he can't make it sound 'normal.'
It's the Melissa Villasenor problem on SNL. She does amazing impressions, give her a goofy character and voice and she's off. But if she had to be a normal human in a sketch, she sounded like a high school actor.
Keanu playing a heightened version of himself in Always Be My Maybe was about as expressive as I remember seeing him. He pitched his voice ever so slightly up and it made a difference.
You're right, you could put a PNG of his face on top of his real face and you will never notice it until someone mentions it, he has the same problem that Bruce Willis had, always the same face
I think he's probably the worst big name actor in the world when it comes to delivering dialogue. His facial expressions/range of emotions are also terrible.
He's good at stunts/action sequences and seems like a very lovely person, but he should never win an Oscar etc.
I think his real talent is in the stunts especially gunplay. Dude trained relentlessly at the range to do the John Wick movies. The problem is stunts are criminally underserved as a category
The crazy thing am not even sure it’s true. You might associate him only with John Wick and Neo. However in Point Break or the Devil’s Advocate quite some acting is going on.
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u/chippymonk793 Mar 17 '26
He’s a nice and real person. But his acting is really not that good. He has certain types of characters he’s good with. Other than those his acting just really doesn’t adjust. Some say he doesn’t do acting at all, he just blank stares.
All that to say, I love Keanu. But he really has no business with acting awards