Yahoo News Fact Check: Photo Allegedly Shows Keanu Reeves with His Grandfather. We Looked Into It
Claim:
A photo posted to social media in April 2024 shows Keanu Reeves with his grandfather.
Rating:
Context:
The photo is real, but it does not depict Reeves with his grandfather.
In April 2024, posts began appearing on Facebook with a picture of actor Keanu Reeves and an older man, who the posts claimed was his grandfather. Snopes readers sent in the picture and asked us to check whether it was real and whether it actually showed Reeves and his grandfather.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=302471036215878&set=a.181153768347606
We discovered that the posts on social media miscaptioned the photo — that is, the photo is real, but the man next to Reeves is not his grandfather.
Some cursory research into Reeves's past suggested something was off with the photo — as of this writing, Reeves is 59, but the photo appears quite recent. Assuming that Reeves's parents (and grandparents) had their children young, that would still put his supposed grandfather in his 90s at the youngest. Some people age with grace, but the man in the photo with Reeves does not look like he is in his 90s.
Upon reverse image searching the image, we found a social media post of the photo that claimed it was someone other than Reeves's grandfather: It was a photographer named Jack Guy.
Another search confirmed that Guy has taken at least two photo shoots of Reeves, one in 2017 and one in 2019. We found the photo in question on Guy's Instagram page, posted in 2019. (The photo shared virally appeared to have been a filtered version of the original image, particularly on the men's faces.)
So no, the photo is not Reeves with his grandfather. It is Reeves with photographer Jack Guy during a photo shoot taken for Arch Motorcycle, a company Reeves co-owns.
Sources:
"Home." ARCH Motorcycle, https://archmotorcycle.com/. Accessed 14 May 2024.
"Https://Twitter.Com/KeanuReeves_USA/Status/1104643200151482368." X (Formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/KeanuReeves_USA/status/1104643200151482368. Accessed 14 May 2024.
Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/jackguyphotography/p/B5LKRceldk1/. Accessed 14 May 2024.
---. https://www.instagram.com/p/Buy2LB-ggye/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=18drnibnscgrz&img_index=1. Accessed 14 May 2024.
---. https://www.instagram.com/p/BQntFp4AEZg/. Accessed 14 May 2024.
"Keanu Reeves | Actor, Producer, Additional Crew." IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000206/. Accessed 15 May 2024.
Keanu Reeves on His Company, Arch Motorcycle 🏍️. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h_Nfb88U9UU. Accessed 14 May 2024.
TikTok - Make Your Day. https://www.tiktok.com/@celebs_world2/video/7350574142862806304. Accessed 14 May 2024.
