It’s getting harder to assume the role of the quiet, behind-the-scenes benefactor these days—especially if you’re a movie star, and especially if your name happens to be Keanu Reeves. The internet has a way of digging up the goods and making them go viral.
The petition was aptly dubbed “Make Keanu Reeves 2019 Times Person of the Year,” and it was started by Jackson Beem three weeks ago. The petition quickly gained momentum.
Many signatories shared why they think the 54-year-old actor should covet the Time Magazine title:
“He donated a large sum of his earnings during the [M]atrix to his special effects crew before dropping off the planet to aid his sister in her fight to survive,“ Joshua Thompson wrote. ”He’s gained my respect through charity, and family fulfillment.”
Angel Cotto wrote, “Keanu Reeves is more than the newest internet favorite person, he’s genuinely a good person who’s gone through highs and lows and has stayed the same down to earth dude.”
Charles Possey summed up much of the sentiment nicely by writing, “Keanu is truly one of the most wholesome people alive in this day and age.”
Yet, some in the media are skeptical whether Time would entertain these glowing endorsements given the magazine’s current trend, shifting gears in recent years away from persons of individual merit, toward collective, social, and political justice movements.
Does Reeves’s altruism hold a candle up to journalists Jamal Khashoggi and the other “Guardians of Truth,” who were named as Time’s 2018 “Person” of the Year pick?
How about the magazine’s 2017 pick of “The Silence Breakers,” consisting of a legion of women who stepped forward in the face of sexual harassment in the workplace?
Perhaps with Reeves’s mass appeal, he will garner a spot somewhere on Time’s annual list of the “100 Most Influential People.”
The celebrated actor told People Magazine that he was not aware of all the hype surrounding his persona recently, but says that “the positivity is great.”
That hype behind Reeves started to grow in 2011 when a candid video surfaced of him riding the New York subway (casually, just like everyone else) in which he is seen giving up his seat to a woman who was carrying a large sack.
The successful actor, who got his big break in the 1994 action thriller “Speed,” has a full summer lineup ahead of him with both the third installment of “John Wick” and “Toy Story 4” now playing in theaters.
