Keanu ruined all the movies he was in

Well that's kind of unfair. Just because one of his movies does badly doesn't mean that it's all his fault, which people tend to claim. Speed 2 did horribly; if Keanu had been on it, a dollar says that everyone would have heaped the blame on him. Yet he wasn't in it, and it still tanked.

In many cases, some movies would have never made it off the ground had Keanu not been there, or at any rate have turned out different. On The Replacements and The Devil's Advocate, they could only afford to hire Gene Hackman and Al Pacino respectively because Keanu deferred a part of his salary. On A Scanner Darkly, Robert Downey Jr. only agreed to come on because Keanu was already part of the cast. Like Thumbsucker, it only managed to get green-lit by the studios because of the big names present.

On Speed, Keanu made many major changes to the script which involved his character Jack Traven becoming quite different from what he was like initially. Jack had started out as a regular violent macho guy with nifty one-liners; he ended up human, and I shall stop talking now because I've only watched one hour of Speed.

Meanwhile, the best example of Keanu contributing to a film's success is still probably The Matrix; the whole project might have been dropped without him. He was the only actor around who firstly understood the script, secondly had confidence in its success (Will Smith turned it down for Wild Wild West because he thought it would be a flop), and was willing to do all the pre-shooting preparation for the lead role that the Wachowskis demanded - such as finishing off a certain reading list before even opening the script. He also chanelled some of his own money towards the movie when the Wachowskis were running short on cash and thinking about ditching the whole thing. The Wachowskis had nothing but praise for Keanu's dedication to the film, citing him as an inspiration to everyone.

(With thanks to ckage.)

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