Keanu Reeves Has a Clause in His Contracts That He Cannot Be Digitally Manipulated

Keanu Reeves has been around for many decades, and is known for his work on Bill and Ted’s, The Matrix, John Wick and so much more. He is known for his acting range and warm demeanor, always treating fans and passersby with kindness, but we now have an interesting bit of trivia about him regarding his acting contract.

Reeves has an interesting clause written into his contract with regard to his likeness, wherein his performances cannot be manipulated without his say-so. In a recent interview with Wired, Reeves was asked about the clause, and he explained:

Yeah, digitally. I don’t mind if someone takes a blink out during an edit. But early on, in the early 2000s, or it might have been the ’90s, I had a performance changed. [He won’t say which.] They added a tear to my face, and I was just like, “Huh?!” It was like, I don’t even have to be here.

When asked how he felt as an actor about deepfake technology, he responded:

What’s frustrating about that is you lose your agency. When you give a performance in a film, you know you’re going to be edited, but you’re participating in that. If you go into deepfake land, it has none of your points of view. That’s scary. It’s going to be interesting to see how humans deal with these technologies. They’re having such cultural, sociological impacts, and the species is being studied. There’s so much “data” on behaviors now. Technologies are finding places in our education, in our medicine, in our entertainment, in our politics, and how we war and how we work.

It’s good that Reeves has a say in how his images and performances are handled so there aren’t any more surprises, especially as this type of tech is advancing.

Reeves can next be seen in John Wick: Chapter 4, and he is getting started soon on Constantine 2, John Wick: Chapter 5, BRZRKR, and the John Wick spinoff, Ballerina.