Keanu Reeves has had a fascinating but often
erratic film career. He first scored a major hit was in
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
(1989) in which he played a slacker who traveled through time in order
to assemble a menagerie of historical figures for a high school history
presentation. He followed up with
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991).
Next came
Point Break
(1991) for which he won a MTV Movie Award for Most Desirable Man. Then came
the mega hit Speed (1994) after which he was chosen by People
magazine in 1995 as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world.
The Matrix trilogy brought him great reviews interspersed with a
series of poorly reviewed often low-budget films. Although not typecast as a
slacker, Keanu has been somewhat typecast as a man either strapped or
sitting in a chair while some type of procedure is performed on him such as
in all three Matrix films, Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Feeling
Minnesota (1996),Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992),
Constantine (2005), A Scanner Darkly (2006), andThe Day the
Earth Stood Still (2008).Although
he is a very private person and keeps a near invisible profile on the
Hollywood radar, a Canadian woman, Karen Sala, filed a bizarre lawsuit
suit against Keanu in 2009. She claimed the actor was the biological father
of at least one of her four adult kids and demanded $150,000 per month in
child support and $3 million a month in spousal support. Karen claimed
that Keanu was a master of disguise and used hypnosis to pass himself off as
her ex-husband to have sex with her. Upon his attorney's advice. Keanu
took a DNA test that proved that Karen's claims were imaginary. Karen then
claimed that Keanu used kung fu hypnosis to tamper with the results. The
judge ruled that
"The applicant's evidence is so incredible that it is not capable of acceptance
by any reasonable trier of fact."
The trial reminds us of an episode of The Simpsons titled "The
Mansion Family" in which Mr. Burns is informed that he has every disease
known and unknown to man during a visit to the Mayo Clinic. However, he
appears to be in perfect health because these diseases cannot coexist in his
body, a phenomenon the doctor describes as "Three Stooges Syndrome."
Since Keanu's name in Hawaiian means "Cool breeze over
mountains," it seems appropriate to toast
him on his birthday with a Cool Breeze Cocktail while watching
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
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