Keanu Reeves was once castigated by audiences for putting on a strange accent in a role, despite the movie he starred in winning three Academy Awards. In truth, it is not very often that the John Wick star finds himself on the wrong side of fans' affections.
Reeves is seen by most as one of Hollywood's finest men, in more than just one sense of the word. Those who have worked with him speak of him with the highest esteem. Jonathan Groff co-starred alongside him in The Matrix Resurrections, for instance.
The former Glee star referred to Reeves as "a contradiction," but even that was only meant as very high praise. "He's very normal," Groff said. "And then at the same time, he's [the superstar] Keanu Reeves!"
Other examples abound of the things that make Reeves so well thought of in and beyond Hollywood. While working on the set of John Wick 4, the actor was caught on camera helping the crew to move their equipment at the end of a long day of shooting. Not every Hollywood star does things like those.
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Even among those who question his acting ability, there persists a sort of universal consensus that Reeves is "a wonderful human being." It is not very surprising therefore, that one of the few times that fans were scathing of him, it had to do with something as "frivolous" as his accent in a film.
Bram Stoker's Dracula, the iconic Gothic horror novel published in 1897 has captivated audiences for over a century. In 1992, iconic director Francis Ford Coppola brought this timeless tale to the silver screen, with Keanu Reeves playing one of the starring roles in the film.
The actor portrayed Jonathan Harker, a young and ambitious solicitor who travels to Transylvania to assist Count Dracula (played by Gary Oldman) with a real estate transaction in England. Harker's journey quickly descends into a nightmarish ordeal as he becomes trapped in the clutches of the mysterious and seductive vampire.
Other members of Bram Stoker's Dracula's star-studded cast included Anthony Hopkins and Winona Ryder. The movie proved to be a box office hit, raking in $216 million against a production budget of $40 million.
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The film also received four Academy Award nominations. From those, the production team was recognized for " Best Costume Design," "Best Sound Editing" and "Best Makeup." They lost out on "Best Art Direction" to James Ivory's Howards End.
While the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula was very well received by audiences, the same could not be said of Keanu Reeves' performance in it. In fact, one audience review on Rotten Tomatoes picks out the actor as the only thing that went wrong with the film.
"Visually stunning, great casting and terrific performances [except] Keanu Reeves. It's successfully disturbing," the review reads. Another fan agreed with the sentiment, saying: "I love this movie so much! It's the best Dracula movie. Great cast, with the exception of Keanu Reeves. He sucks."
It was a similar story on Reddit, where fans refused to hold back on their criticism of Reeves. "Why didn't the director tell Keanu Reeves his acting was bad while filming Dracula and give him better direction or advice?" one fan wondered. "I [would] understand if it [was] a low budget movie, but Dracula (1992) is a well-made, big-budget movie."
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One fan did jump to Reeves' defense, writing: "I never understood the hate [for Keanu's] performance in Bram Stoker's Dracula. I think he held his own against some of the greatest actors of all time, Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins."
The critique of Keanu Reeves' English accent in Bram Stoker's Dracula continues to this day. However, it was never for a lack of effort to get it right on his part. In fact, according to those who worked with him on the project, he put in a lot of work to ensure he mastered the accent.
Director Francis Ford Coppola explained as much in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in October 2015. "We knew that it was tough for him to affect an English accent," he explained. "He tried so hard."
According to Coppola, Reeves actually struggled because he was too obsessed with getting it right. "That was the problem, actually," he continued. "He wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it perfectly it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn't as critical of him, but that's because I like him personally so much."