Leave Keanu’s beard alone and Eva Longoria is John Wick’s fairy godmother

Keanu Reeves was at the 2024 London Literature Festival yesterday to promote his novel, The Book of Elsewhere. As you can see, he is bearded. He’s been bearded for at least a decade – I can’t recall seeing him barefaced in at least ten years. I’m talking about his facial hair because it’s currently making headlines with the 10th anniversary of John Wick (which… has it only been 10 years?). 

To mark the anniversary directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch talked to Business Insider about making the film and revealed that initially the people financing the project insisted that Keanu could not play John Wick with a beard. Via Variety:  

“We were trying to do a modern-day Greek mythology fantasy movie. That’s not mainstream. So we wanted to do something cool with Keanu,” Stahelski said about the beard. “But the money people, they wanted to see Keanu fucking Reeves. ‘Point Break’ Keanu, ‘Speed’ Keanu. And I don’t know if this exists anymore, but at the time we were told by the powers that be you don’t cover up your leading man’s face with a beard.”

 I don’t want to get into it, but since then I have had contentious conversations about stars having facial hair. ‘He needs to be clean-shaven for international!’ That’s the classic studio line,” Leitch added.

Stahelski said the team “caught a lot of shit” for refusing to have Reeves shave, a choice that stemmed from the filmmakers wanting people to view the character not as the Reeves action heroes they were familiar with from his previous movies.”

They went ahead with the beard anyway and as soon as the “money people” saw the footage, they knew it was the right decision. And the rest is cinematic history. John Wick looks the way he does, and this is what the directors and their hair and makeup team had envisioned all along… because THEY ARE THE ARTISTS WITH THE CREATIVE VISION. It’s another example of the “money people” getting in the way of art, and it happens a lot. In this case, the artists pushed ahead with the risk and it worked out in their favour but in many cases, the “money people” win the argument and you have to wonder how many movies and series we’ve watched would have been different, as in better, had it not been for the financiers coming in and taking over the chat. 

Unless, of course, the “money people” is also an artist. 

Because the other revelation that Chad and David shared in their interview is that John Wick would never have happened without a major assist from… Eva Longoria! Via Slash Film: 

"We were less than a week out and we lost almost $6 million on a gap financing. We were financing independently to get the bond, but one of the investors couldn't raise the money in time. Me, Keanu, and Dave had deferred, Basil [Iwanyk, Producer] had maxed his three credit cards, we all had put in everything, including Keanu. And we were still short. So we were shut down."

CAA then came up with the idea to pitch the project to their clients and see if any would invest in the film. And that’s when Eva came through. Only the filmmakers didn’t know until after production had wrapped! 

"She came to the rescue and she provided the gap financing. We didn't know any of this. Basil never told Keanu or us. Literally less than 24 hours before we had to lock the doors on the movie and walk away, Basil said, 'We've got the investor, we've locked the gap.' We found out by the end of the movie, Basil took us out to dinner, and we were laughing about all the bulls–t that happened, and he said, 'By the way, funny story, you know who gap financed you? Eva Longoria.' We were like, 'What!' Once the movie got big, Dave and I met Eva. We had never met her before. We took her out to lunch at Chateau Marmont and she was laughing going, 'I didn't think it was going to work.'"

It was obviously a great investment for Eva in the end but at the time, she was putting her money – SIX MILLION DOLLARS – into a high risk situation because, obviously, she had a feeling about the creative team. Moral of the story? Eva Longoria is a f-cking G. She saved John Wick, she got her bag, and she’s been quietly smugging about this for years. From now on then, when you think about John Wick, say thanks to Eva Longoria. She’s the fairy godmother. 

Attached: Keanu at his book talk in London on October 22, 2024 and some bonus shots of him with his band Dogstar playing the Ohana Festival 2024, Day 1, in Dana Point, California on September 27, 2024.