There once was a time when Keanu Reeves wasn’t Keanu Reeves.
During a Wednesday appearance on the New Heights podcast, the Good Fortune star recounted the early years of his career when he was working with a manager who had the idea to change his name.
“I was in Toronto, Canada, and then I got a manager who lived in Los Angeles,” he began. “At 20 years old, I drove in my car to Los Angeles. Got out of my car and my manager said, ‘We want to change your name.’ And so that’s like, a welcome to Hollywood [moment].”
“And I remember I was walking on the beach and I was just like, ‘My name? What if I change my name? What?’” he added. Despite being initially taken back by the idea, Reeves came up with a few alternative name options.
“My middle name is Charles, so I was like, ‘Chuck?’ And I grew up on a street called Spadina, Chuck Spadina,” he said. “And then I was something Templeton. So then I became K.C. Reeves. I was credited as K.C. Reeves.”
The John Wick actor is, in fact, credited as K.C. Reeves for an episode of the 1986 anthology series The Magical World of Disney. He did not explain why his then-manager prompted him to make the change. But the name didn’t last for long.
“And then I couldn’t do it. So then I would be in auditions and they would go, ‘K.C. Reeves.’ And I wouldn’t even answer,” Reeves added. “Six months later, I was like, ‘I’m not doing this.’ That’s a Hollywood moment.”
Like Reeves, Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro recently opened up about how they were encouraged to change their names. The One Battle After Another star said, similarly on the New Heights podcast, that an agent told him his name was “too ethnic.”
“I finally got an agent and they said: ‘Your name is too ethnic,” I go, What do you mean?’ They go, ‘No, too ethnic. They’re never going to hire you. Your new name is Lenny Williams,” DiCaprio said. “‘What’s Lenny Williams?’ ‘We took your middle name and made it your last name and now [your first] name is Lenny.’ And my dad saw [the headshot photo the agent took], he ripped it up, and said, ‘Over my dead body.’”
