Keanu described himself as a 'middle-class white boy. A bourgeois, middle-class white boy with an absent father, a strong-willed mother, and two beautiful younger sisters.'
http://www.schreiben10.com/referate/Biographien/10/Keanu-Reeves-reon.php
I have the magazine from which that's excerpted, The Face. Your "breaking news" is from December 1991, twenty-six years ago.
He's not denying that his father is Chinese-Hawaiian, but saying he was raised like any other non-Asian kid in the places where he and his sister lived with their mother (who is not Asian), New York and Toronto. Genetically, some Asian. Culturally, very little.
When I press him about his past, he resists for a couple of minutes, staring unhappily at my big tape recorder on the table ("the dinosaur," he calls it), then splurges forward in an uncomfortable mixture of semi-revelation and parody. The following is delivered as a totally uninterrupted monologue: "Oh, wow. O.K., so here we go. I lived in New York City until I was six or seven or eight. I grew up in Manhattan - upper west side - and then I moved to Toronto. That's where I spent my misspent youth, my spent youth. I spent my youth, my youth was spent. I'm a middle-class white boy... a bourgeois middle-class white boy with an absent father, a strong-willed mother, and two beautiful younger sisters. I played sports - my main sports were hockey and basketball. I was kinda shy in school, but I also had the class-clown element about me. I was removed, but I was involved. I was very particular. If you wanted to invade my space it was heavy; you'd get a reaction. I started acting when I was 15. Toronto was a great place to grow up in. You know, no graffiti. We'd play hide-and-go-seek...
Speed
Want to know what people are most terrified of? Look at how they insult others. It's that.
He was raised in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods...I think it was called Bridle Path.
shareHe was raised in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods...I think it was called Bridle Path.
share1) What Speed_Of_Late said. Unless you're a time traveller, something that came out in 1991 is not exactly breaking news.
2) No one ever claimed he was Asian, other than this one guy on IMDb years ago who started a thread here titled "A VERY HANDSOME CHINESE MAN"
3) In a 2013 interview, Keanu described himself as "Chinese, Hawaiian and English"; also from 2013: "My grandmother is Chinese and Hawaiian, so I was around Chinese art, furniture and cuisine when I was growing up,” he said. “I remember that I really liked haikus. I also liked animé and kung fu movies—so, yeah, I was exposed to Asian culture since I was a kid."
source: http://www.whoaisnotme.net/articles/2013_0920_kea2.htm
He generally seems more willing these days to talk about his ethnic background. In the 1990s, there were also two big factors that might have made him want to assert himself as white: 1) he had a very bad relationship with his father, and identified strongly with his white mother; 2) he was being rejected from auditions for not being white enough.
---
It's the question that drives us. I know the answer is 42.
He doesn't have much Asian in him he is only 1/32 Chinese but he looks 1/4 Chinese he definitely looks more European now he is older when he was younger he look more mixed.
shareUm...1/32? Sorry but I think he is more Asian then that? Have you ever looked at Kim? Have you ever looked at a young picture of his father, Sam...he looks like he is from China, not Hawaii...so I don't believe what you said is accurate.
shareHe doesn't have much Asian in him he is only 1/32 Chinese but he looks 1/4 ChineseHe's almost half native Hawaiian, though, and the Hawaiian people have origins in Asia. So that's probably more responsible for his Asian features than his negligible Chinese ancestry. His father has been often described as Chinese-Hawaiian, which might just mean that their ancestors originated from China, rather than signify any significant ethnic Chinese ancestry.
---
It's the question that drives us. I know the answer is 42.
Yeah, he definitely does have some Asian-like features. Even his hairline is fairly unusual for by caucasian standards, in fact his hairline during his younger days was almost identical to mine, and I'm Asian myself.
If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. -Angel