Sad Keanu Reeves Writes Open Letter About Life, Loss-Incorrectly Attributed!
Summary of eRumor:
Keanu Reeves supposedly wrote an inspiring open letter about life and loss that has gone viral online.
The Truth:
Keanu Reeves didn’t write an inspirational open letter about life and loss that went viral on social media sites.
The open letter went viral after it appeared at Keanu Reeves Online, an unofficial Facebook fan page for the actor, on November 21, 2015. In the letter, Keanu Reeves (supposedly) writes about his early life, living with dyslexia and losing the woman that he loved:
“Most people know me, but don’t know my story. At the age of 3, I watched my father leave. I attended four different high schools and struggled with dyslexia, making my education more challenging than it is for most. At the age of 23, my closest friend River Phoenix died of a drug overdose. In 1998, I met Jennifer Syme. We fell instantly in love and by 1999, Jennifer was pregnant with our daughter. Sadly, after eight months, our child was born stillborn. We were devastated by her death and it eventually ended our relationship. 18 months later, Jennifer died in a car accident. Since then I avoid serious relationships and having kids. My younger sister had lukemia. Today she is cured, and I donated 70% of my gains from the movie Matrix to Hospitals that treat leukemia. I am one of the only Hollywood stars without a Mansion. I don’t have any bodyguards and do not wear fancy clothes. And even though I’m worth $100 million, I still ride the subway and I love it!
The inspirational open letter about Keanu Reeves’ life quickly went viral. That’s due in large part to the fact that many people think Keanu Reeves Online is the actor’s official Facebook page, but that’s not the case. The page clearly states that it’s in no way linked to Keanu Reeves:
This is a Keanu Reeves Fan Page. We are not associated with the real Keanu Reeves in any way. We just quote what we read and spread positivity.
Keanu Reeves Online posts a lot of pictures of Keanu Reeves and inspirational or positive messages about life. These messages often appear in quotation marks and don’t list an author, so it’s easy to assume that the passages were written or spoken by Keanu Reeves.
In reality, Keanu Reeves has refused to talk about his personal life, so him writing an unprompted open letter about his biggest struggles would have been very unusual. A Keanu Reeves profile that appeared in the magazine Details in 2008 touches on the actor’s refusal to talk about his personal life:
He remains stoic in his refusal to talk about his personal life. (There are reasons to remain stoic. In 1999 he lost a daughter with his girlfriend, actress Jennifer Syme; the baby was stillborn. Almost two years later Syme died in a car accident in Los Angeles. To ask him about these things would seem merely cruel.) Later in the day Keanu notices the query GIRLFRIEND? scribbled on a page of my legal pad. He answers, politely and preemptively, like this: “No.”
“No you don’t have a girlfriend or no you don’t want to get into it?”
“No,” he says. “All of its implications.”
There have been a number of celebrity pranks similar to this one. It was falsely reported that Richard Gere gave food and $100 to every homeless person in New York, and that Jennifer Anniston donated food and clothes to a homeless single mom who she met on the street. These hoaxes could be simply designed to draw a response from celebrities, or to make celebrities “look bad” when they debunk rumors about their over-the-top kindness.
So, the inspirational open letter that appeared at Keanu Reeves Online covers actual events from the actor’s life, but it wasn’t actually written by Keanu Reeves. At this point, the letter’s actual author isn’t known.