Why Keanu Reeves took eye-watering pay cut for film and did it again years later

Keanu Reeves took a hefty pay cut to get a movie made the way it was supposed to more than once, and we're not even talking about the big bonuses he gave to crew on some of his films.

There's a reason the actor has a particularly wholesome reputation and is very well liked, with there being plenty of things he's done that people can point towards to say they reckon he's a good guy.

One of those came on the set of the 1997 movie The Devil's Advocate, as according to ABC News the producers wanted to cast Al Pacino in the film but didn't have the money in the budget to afford him.

However, this is where Keanu reportedly stepped in to reduce his own salary by a few million dollars so there would be enough money to afford to hire Pacino.

A few years later he did something similar for the movie The Replacements where he took a 90 percent pay cut so Gene Hackman could be brought onto the film.

Keanu Reeves gave up millions so the budget for The Devil's Advocate could afford Al Pacino (Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma via Getty Images)

Reeves also passed on appearing in Speed 2 so he could be in The Devil's Advocate, a decision which was probably for the best given he got to work with Al Pacino on the latter film while the sequel to Speed ended up getting shredded by critics and audiences.

It's far from the only time he's been willing to give up part of his pay from a film, as he paid out bonuses from his own profit-sharing deal from The Matrix to go towards the special effects team on the iconic movie.

"He felt that they were the ones who made the movie and that they should participate," a movie executive told the Wall Street Journal of the actor's decision to give part of his profit-sharing to them.

The contracts he negotiated for those films turned out to be very financially lucrative for both himself and the people he shared the money with.

Meanwhile, over on the set of John Wick 4 he gifted the stunt performers on the film very impressive watches and a few grand to show his gratitude for their major part in bringing the movie together.

He did the same thing again a few years later with Gene Hackman for The Replacements (Warner Bros)

However, there is such a thing as being a bit too wholesome if you can believe it.

That's because Keanu Reeves seems like such a nice guy people can say he did just about anything with his money from movies and people would believe it.

A claim going round that he donated 70 percent of his salary from The Matrix to cancer research would have people thinking that was just more Keanu wholesomeness.

But just because he sounds like the kind of guy who might do that it doesn't mean it happened, as his publicist once had to tell Newsweek the claim was untrue.

Still, you can understand why people might believe it given all the other cool stuff he's done.