Dude! Keanu Admits Drug Use
January 9 -- Talking with glossy mag Vanity Fair, Keanu Reeves admits to using, and vastly enjoying, recreational drugs. We're shocked, truly shocked. Not!
Reeves does nothing to dispel his image as a laid-back kind of dude by saying in the February issue of the magazine, "I've had wonderful experiences [with drugs]. I mean, really wonderful. In teaching. Personal epiphanies. About life. About a different perspective — help with different perspectives that you have. You know what I mean? Relationships to nature. Relationships with the self. With other people. With events." Cosmic, bro.
Although Reeves has achieved box-office fame with his pumped-up action dudes in Speed and The Matrix, his surfer-dude persona (showcased in Point Break and the Bill & Ted movies) is still very much intact.
The 36-year-old actor says he has had to work hard to dispel his reputation as a drug user, saying, "… I did some things that I wouldn't have normally done if I didn't have to, like a Japanese commercial to pay the rent or [the Rebel Without a Cause-themed video "Rush, Rush"] with Paula Abdul."
Although we begrudge Keanu none of his dudeness, we can't help but note the poor timing of his remarks in conjunction with another magazine article on his late co-star River Phoenix.
In the January issue of Movieline, director Peter Bogdanovich eulogizes Phoenix, one of his generation's most gifted actors, who starred memorably with Reeves in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho. Phoenix died of a drug overdose on Halloween 1993.
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