080823 - Keanu's financial generosity

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The correct thing to say is Keanu turned down the role because he didn't like the script and they didn't offer him enough money to accept the role. Money speaks.

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Instances of Keanu Not Hearing the Money Speak:

1. Turned down The Fly II for Dangerous Liaisons. The latter paid him only one tenth of what he would have got for the former.

2. Turned down the 11 million offered for Speed 2 and went off to Canada to play Hamlet for $2000 a week - minimum Actor's Guild salary - in January 2005.

3. Then came back and - while people were still waving the 11 million at him - did Feeling Minnesota for $200,000. [b]Note:[/b] 11 million is a lot of money. It would have been the most that Keanu had ever been offered for a film.

4. Took a paycut of 1 million for The Devil's Advocate so the studio could afford to hire Al Pacino

5. Took a 90% pay cut for The Replacements so that they could afford to hire Gene Hackman. Then he secretly asked the trailer people to replace his gigantic trailer with one that was the same size as that of all the other less-famous cast members, and was kind of traumatised when the news leaked out and everyone found out about it.

6. Donated $38 million towards the costumes and special effects department for the Matrix sequels when the Wachowskis ran short of cash.

And there are other instances of staggering acts of generosity on Keanu's part that are however not related to him picking scripts so I'll leave them out for now.

But my point is that he does not work for the money. Keanu only does scripts that he likes. Money is never an issue; he's said that salary was only important back when he was young and had to be able to afford to feed himself. Whereas now he has enough to last him "centuries", and he enjoys the financial security that gives him to be able to do the little indie films that he loves so much. He's said that if he had the ability not to worry about his box-office and his next job, he would do nothing but talky indie films with good stories, interesting characters and well-written dialogue.