Source Young Keanu Reeves
Keanu Reeves did 90% of his own stunts in John Wick
[He legit practiced Brazilian jiu jitsu with jean Jacque Machado too!] (https://www.instagram.com/p/60Xo0oi9nW/) This is evident most notably in the scene where he arm bars a guy!
I have a fun story about this movie.
I work in entertainment. A few guys I work with are stuntmen who work as seasonal employees. Long story short, the first movie had just left theaters. I hadn’t seen it yet but heard good things. I “procured” the movie online and was watching it between shows at work. A coworker sees me watching it and tells me “Oh, you know [let’s call him “Big Country] was in that right?” I walk up to him excitedly and ask him about being in the movie. He tells me about his role. He is the second to last person John Wick kills. He’s the dude that John drifts his car around the square concrete barrier and gets shot.
He tells me that originally it was going to be done in post and that they were gonna film my buddy getting shot and then add the car drifting so that there wasn’t a chance Keanu could hit my with the car. Keanu asked both Big Country and the director if he could try to do it without the CGI. Big country agrees and the director says that the unit is breaking for lunch soon. He can practice while everyone is at lunch and when they come back if both big country and himself feel it’s safe they’ll do it.
Keanu apparently spent his entire one hour lunch break just drifting around the barrier and pretending to shoot a mannequin. The unit came back from lunch. Keanu ran the stunt. And then did it in two takes.
Anyway, so we doing a show while talking about all this. Once we get back to the green room I grab my tablet and fast forward to Big Country’s part. He looms over me at like 6’4″ hes built like a linebacker and has very intense blue eyes and says to me
“Whopper, this movie doesnt come out until next week. How did you get this?”
I calmly place my tablet on the table and reply
“Oh, that’s a funny story see I…….”
And turned and ran out of the building screaming.
He was a good sport about it. There was a jar for a while that everyone who “acquired” movies off the internet had to drop a few bucks in to pay for everyone’s residuals. We would take the money and have a BBQ every year.
Sorry this was so long. Please excuse any formatting or spelling. I just woke up, and I’m not very bright.
Also, Big country is also in John Wick Part 2. He is one of the dudes in the subway that gets shot by the homeless guy.
The character ‘Switch’ in The Matrix was originality going to be played by 2 actors (a male actor in the real world, a female in the matrix, hence the name)
As far as we know that could be the case. She is pretty androgynous.