Keanu Reeves

Born: 2 September 1964
Where: Beirut, Lebanon

Reeves will always be synonomous with the computer age messiah Neo, the character he portrayed in the all-conquering Matrix series.

He first made his name as a vacant but rad dude in Bill & Ted - the reputation for which he managed to bury with Neo.

Reeves, whose first name means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian, was born to an English showgirl mother and a Chinese-Hawaiian geologist father.

He moved to New York, then Toronto, with his mother Patricia, who divorced three times in total.

A keen teenage ice hockey player (he was known as The Wall), he dropped out of high school to pursue an acting career, making his movie debut in Rob Lowe hockey flick Youngblood in 1986.

He turned down the role of Pvt Chris Taylor in Platoon (it went to Charlie Sheen)and first garnered critical attention in Tim Hunter's River's Edge.

He followed up an impressive performance in Dangerous Liaisons with huge success in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure the next year and its 1991 sequel.

The scored a cult hit with surfing crime thriller Point Break opposite Patrick Swayze and Gary Busey.

He then fought to shake off the stereotype with worthy parts in My Own Private Idaho, Dracula - for which his English accent was panned - and even a bit of Shakespeare, in 1993's Much Ado About Nothing.

He landed a major hit with bus hostage drama Speed opposite Sandra Bullock but, wisely, dropped out of the sequel.

He first dabbled with sci-fi in the hit Johnny Mnemonic and went on to appear in a swathe of movies, including A Walk in the Clouds, Sweet November and The Replacements.

Supernatural thriller The Gift opposite Cate Blanchett won him good reviews as did the drama Hardball.

However, it was 1999's The Matrix that catapulted him into the top drawer with its "Bullet Time" special effects married to a barking plot.

Following its success, Reeves decamped to Australia to shoot the two sequels - The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.

Reeves has also had to overcome personal tragedy after the baby he was expecting with girlfriend Jennifer Syme was stillborn and she was then killed in a car crash.

In 2005, Reeves starred as the reluctant hero and title character in Constantine - a stylish action thriller based on the Dc/Vertigo comic Hellblazer.