‘Like a Chinese Menu’

“I’m a visceral experience,” observes Keanu Reeves, the 24 year-old star of such films as “The River’s Edge,” “Permanent Record” and the new “The Prince of Pennsylvania.”

To date identified with serious, dramatic roles, the tousled-haired Reeves is confident that his career is about to change gears.

“Prince” casts him in the offbeat comic role of a young man who kidnaps his father to extort a ransom as a means of escaping a grim future in the Pennsylvania coal mines. He’s also recently completed the period drama “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” which he referred to as his first “ingenue” part.

“The character (in “Liaisons”) is a romantic,” says Reeves. “He wants to be a Knight of Malta but it’s obvious that he’s easily led astray.”

Reeves gets his unusual first name (Hawaiian for “cool breeze”) from his Chinese-Hawaiian geologist father.

Born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, he started acting professionally at 14 after “a typical adolescence of playing lots of hockey.” He was a regular on the Canadian television series “Hanging In,” but his goal was to take on more challenging parts.

“I wanted to be in the Shaw or Stratford Shakespeare festivals but they turned me down twice,” he recalls. “I didn’t fit. I was too young and unruly by their standards. So I packed up my Volvo and headed for Hollywood in search of steak-and-potatoes roles.”

First came Tim Hunter’s “The River’s Edge,” in which Reeves played the sensitive, inadvertent leader of high school students who are privy to a murder. His performance convinced writer-director Ron Nyswaner that he should cast Reeves in “The Prince of Pennsylvania.”

“I saw in him constant emotion,” says Nyswaner. “He’s like a Chinese menu--he’ll give you a half-dozen different readings. But the real Keanu is a lot like the character in the film despite his refusal to see any resemblance.”

Reeves remains unconvinced, insisting the general nobility of his screen characters is pure coincidence.

“As people get to know me better,” he says, “I’ll start to get the sleazier roles.”