Keanu Reeves Went Full Neo to Convince Jackson to Cast Him as This LotR Character
As we've covered before, casting for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies was not untroubled, despite the impressive end result.
In particular, Jackson went through several candidates for the role of Aragorn, starting with Stuart Townsend, and considering Russel Crowe for a time, before Viggo Mortensen got that role, luckily for him and for all the viewers, who can now enjoy his iconic performance.
What we did not cover before is that one of those candidates was Keanu Reeves. Or at least he tried his best to become a candidate. Back then in 1999, in an interview with the Australian magazine Rip It Up, Keanu revealed, when asked about the big projects which were talked about at the time, The Lord of the Rings and X-Men (via):
"I'm petitioning to play Strider. I'd love to work with [Peter Jackson], but I'm not sure if it's going to go ahead. I hope I can."
Keanu consistently expressed a desire to play the character, publicly campaigning for the casting to happen. Sadly, though, it didn't.
"I want to play Strider in Lord Of The Rings," the actor said in another interview. "(Director) Peter Jackson is doing that and I might have to go begging for the role. I have people making calls right now. Hopefully he'll think I'm right for the part. I'm the man. I'm there."
But despite such flurry of effort, worthy of Neo, Keanu's approaches were in vain, and, as it seems, the crew and the cast of The Lord of the Rings do not even remember him being seriously considered as Aragorn.
Maybe Keanu Reeves just didn't match Peter Jackson's image of Aragorn so that all the above-mentioned calls from Keanu's people were in vain from the start. It is also possible that Keanu eventually decided that with the upcoming sequels to The Matrix, he could not afford the risky (as with many great successes, The Lord of the Rings trilogy was seen as a gamble at the time of its filming, which had its share of difficulties and conflicts) long commitment to the three big fantasy movies, which were going to be shot back-to-back.