PARIS, THE DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN
He sits in the black leather booth of a Paris brasserie, a porcelain cup half full of cappuccino by his elbow, thumbing the screen of his phone with his left hand, which is caked with slashes of dried blood.
“Let’s see, where is it,” he says, scrolling. He’s searching for a text message he sent to Carrie-Anne Moss, his co-star in the Matrix movie franchise, almost two years ago.
Keanu Reeves had appeared in the doorway of this restaurant exactly on time, on about five hours’ sleep, just a few minutes ago. It’s called Le Grand Colbert, and he was last here for one very long night with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, filming the end of the 2003 movie Something’s Gotta Give. He hasn’t set foot in the place since.
He was wearing a surgical mask, a black knit cap over his long black straw hair, a black motorcycle jacket and jeans. He showed his proof of vaccination to the maître d’. And he walked into the bright salon of a place, nine-metre ceilings and big round bistro lights and brass railings and clinking glasses and waitstaff in clean white shirts and dark aprons.
As he removed his mask and walked down the centre of the restaurant, diners (a good percentage of whom are tourists and are here because of the movie), waiters and bartenders watched him, a surreal, time-warp moment. He was Meg Ryan stopping into Katz’s Deli for a pastrami sandwich.
Is that—?
Does he actually—?
He stopped to chat at a table where someone happened to have worked with his girlfriend, the artist Alexandra Grant. He passed the booth where the famous scene was filmed. People always request that booth, so it’s always occupied. Today the woman sitting where Keanu Reeves sat in the movie she loves looked up and saw Keanu Reeves walk right past the booth where Keanu Reeves sat, and damn near choked on her escargot.
He’s still scrolling, searching for the thing.
“That looks like it hurt,” I say after a minute. “Your hand.”
He twists his hand around and looks down at it, showing a gash that extends from his pinkie clear down the side of his palm, all the way to the wrist bone.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, then gives a quick tilt of his head and smiles. “Movie shenanigans!”
Reeves is here talking with me to promote The Matrix Resurrections, the fourth instalment in one of his gazillion-dollar movie franchises. But the reason he’s in Paris is to film John Wick: Chapter 4, the fourth instalment in his other gazillion-dollar movie franchise.
“We’re filming nights now, and I finished at seven o’clock this morning,” he says, pulling back his hair, still damp from a shower. “I just woke up.” It’s 1:15 in the afternoon. He coughs a little.
I’m still looking at his hand. “Does it hurt?”
He looks at me, momentarily confused, then realises I’m the one who’s confused. “Oh, no, this is all movie blood,” he says, amused. “It doesn’t all come off in the first wash.”
He turns back to his phone, focused. He scrolls
