Keanu Reeves

Reeves broke through in 1989 with Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, playing the cheerfully dim Ted "Theodore" Logan — a role that could've typecast a lesser actor for life but instead became a launching pad (Wikipedia). He didn't coast on it. By 1991, he was working with Gus Van Sant on My Own Private Idaho and appearing in Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break as undercover FBI agent Johnny Utah, two films that couldn't be more different in tone and both requiring something real from him (TMDB). The Matrix in 1999 changed everything — again. Playing hacker-turned-chosen-one Neo across a franchise that ran through 1999 to 2021, Reeves became one of the defining action stars of his era, a status that coexisted somewhat awkwardly with his continued interest in smaller, stranger projects (Wikipedia). He'd also collaborated with Bernardo Bertolucci on Little Buddha in 1993, playing Siddhartha himself, which — honestly — is a casting choice that still raises eyebrows, in the best possible way. Then came John Wick in 2014. The franchise, directed by Chad Stahelski, cast Reeves as a grieving assassin pulled back into an underworld of operatic violence, and the opening sequence — a man burying his dog — did more character work in five minutes than most action films manage in two hours. The series ran through at least 2023 and marked what many called a full career resurgence (Wikipedia). He's also voiced Duke Caboom in Toy Story 4 (2019) and portrayed the rock-star mercenary Johnny Silverhand in the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), a performance that required motion capture and recording work well beyond a standard voice role (Wikipedia).