CANADIAN actor Keanu Reeves was born on September 2, 1964, in Beirut. After his parents divorced, he was brought up mainly in Toronto, but attended four high schools in five years.

He turned down a role in Platoon because he disliked the violence but took a role in the Oscar-winning Dangerous Liaisons.

In the 1990s, he starred in Speed with Sandra Bullock, but The Matrix films made him a leading man in Hollywood. He loves motorbikes and has homes in Los Angeles and New York.

FIRST NAME: Keanu is Hawaiian and means cool breeze over the mountain'. My parents named me after my great uncle.

NICKNAME: I've been called many things in my life, but my first nickname was The Wall. Kids at my school in Toronto called me that because I was a pretty good goalkeeper in the ice hockey team.

PROFESSIONAL ACTING DEBUT: I was 14 and got a part in a Canadian TV comedy called Hanging In, set in a youth counselling centre. I played a tough street kid.

COMMERCIAL: The next year, 1980, I got a dancing part in a Canadian Coca-Cola TV ad.

STAGE DEBUT: It was in a workshop production called For Adults Only, based on the real-life abduction of young women in Toronto.

FILM DEBUTt: That was while the family was living in Canada in 1985 and was a teen drama, Dream To Believe.

US FILM DEBUT: I had a small part in the 1986 ice-hockey adventure Youngblood.

US TV DEBUT: That was in the 1985 made-for-TV movie Letting Go, about a career woman who struggles to overcome the loss of a failed love relationship, and together with a young widower learns to love again.

SHAKESPEARIAN PLAY: Yes, I've done Shakespeare! The first time was in 1985 in Romeo And Juliet in Toronto.

CAR: It was a 1969 British racing green Volvo with holes in the floor and bricks holding up the seats! I was 17 and made many long journeys in it.

JOB: While in Hollywood waiting for my big break, I took a job sharpening skates at an ice rink, and then I made a hundred pounds weight of pasta every day for a shop called Pastissima.

SCAR: I got my first one - an abdominal scar - in 1988 in a motorcycle crash. I was in hospital for a week with broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. When the paramedics came to get me, an emergency medical technician trainee picked up one end of the stretcher ... then dropped it by mistake! It made me laugh, but I couldn't breathe!

FIRST BIG HIT: 1989's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, in which Alex Winter and I played two seemingly dumb teenagers struggling to prepare a historic presentation with the help of a time machine.

MEGA-HIT: I guess that was Speed in 1994. It was a fantastic success and grossed nearly $300 million at the box-office worldwide.