Rachel Weisz's first Hollywood film is approaching. On the verge of Chain Reaction's release, she gushed about Keanu Reeves.
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As British actress Rachel Weisz gushes on and on--"He's one of the most educated, cerebral, chivalrous men I've ever met. He is a true Renaissance man"--one wouldn't necessarily assume she's talking about Keanu Reeves. But that is Reeves she's describing, and from the sound of it her favorite American. While playing Reeves's love interest in her first Hollywood film, Chain Reaction, Weisz received a quick education in the differences between Brits and Americans: "Unlike the English, who talk in layers upon layers and find it difficult to say whatever's on their mind, Americans just come out and say it." This brush with Yankee brusqueness seems not to have undercut Cambridge-educated Weisz's English powers of diplomacy. She claims, for example, that Reeves's band, Dogstar, is "brilliant." During the four-month shoot, Weisz and Reeves bonded by comparing experiences with Bernardo Bertolucci, who directed Reeves in Little Buddha, as well as Weisz's American screen debut in Stealing Beauty. One thing they both noticed, she says, was Bertolucci's annoyance with the habit actors have of touching their own hair: "He'd yell, 'Cut! Take your fucking hand out of your fucking hair!'" Then, in her very English way, Weisz adds, "I think he (Bertolucci) found it a bit distracting."
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Evan Cutler