The actor Keanu Reeves, whose fourth instalment of the John Wick franchise released last week, says he is a big fan of chess.
“I’ve been playing some chess. It’s a competitive game. I don’t think you walk to the board and go, “I hope I lose.” If you don’t know how to play, I’m great—yeah, I’m a master. And if you’re really good, I’m terrible,” he told the People magazine.
He has talked about his love for the game in the past as well. He played on the chess team in high school and avidly followed the the game between the IBM computer Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov. During the shooting of the 1997 movie Devil’s advocate, he has said he would play chess.
“The game drives me mad,” Reeves had told The Daily Record. “To unwind, I, you know, battle with my computer. That sounds crazy. Unwinding playing chess.”
In 2016, Reeves narrated a hilarious quantum chess game between Stephen Hawking and the actor Paul Rudd. In the story, an un-aging Keanu Reeves from 700 years into the future insists that Rudd must provide the keynote speech at a Caltech event on Quantum Physics or he will put the future of humanity at risk. But when Caltech question his credentials, Rudd challenges Hawking, the scheduled speaker at the event, to a game of quantum chess. Reeves’s narration is pitch perfect.
