There is little doubt that The Matrix was a huge career milestone for Keanu Reeves as it would eventually become one of the biggest franchises in cinematic history. However, there was a time when Reeves almost had to leave the film due to a spinal injury.
Amazingly, Keanu Reeves refused to let the injury stop him. He admitted that he hid the injury from the Wachowskis so he can continue working on the film.
Keanu Reeves was recently a guest on The Art of Action podcast where he revealed that he had been injured before he started working on The Matrix.
"I met with the Wachowskis and I loved the script, and they showed me pre-vis for bullet time which was extraordinary, and one of the things they talked about in the meeting was training in Hong Kong-style martial arts and asked if I was okay with that, and that it was over four months and I was like 'yeah, that sounds okay,'" he said.
"The only problem - I was dealing with a neck issue which was getting worse, I’d spent a couple of years fighting it off, I was getting tingling. I had done a film called Chain Reaction in Chicago and had a couple epidurals put in, shot up in the spine," he continued. "I had a bulging disc and I had a fractured disc too, and I started losing feeling and balance."
Still, Keanu Reeves didn't let that stop him.
"And so I said yes to The Matrix and the four months of training, but it was pretty bad so I went to a neck doctor, and basically I had spinal stenosis too," he said. "My spinal column was being sausaged basically, so I had to have a two-level fusion on my spine before training, and they put a plate in my neck."
He continued, "But I never actually told anyone because I didn’t want to tell anyone I wouldn’t be able to do the film. What was cool though was at the time the way to recover from spinal surgery was different. They put the plate in my neck and told me to start moving right away. I had to train for The Matrix in a neck brace."
Luckily, Reeves made it through the difficult shoot and the rest is history.
Keanu Reeves recently reprised his role as Neo in The Matrix Resurrections, which premiered in December 2021.
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