I Want What They Have: Keanu Reeves and Alexandra Grant

Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples who give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.

I’m far from the only person who just wants good things in this world for Keanu Reeves. This is, after all, the man who anonymously donates millions to children’s hospitals, and gave away a significant sum of his backend earnings from The Matrix to crew members, as he thought they deserved it more. He’s the man who launched a thousand memes with the mere existence of a photo of him sitting on a park bench, looking sad. The man who brought Sandra Bullock Champagne and truffles on a motorbike after he heard she’d never tried them before, then sat down to have his nails painted by Bullock and her friend. The man who loves gaming, martial arts, rock music, and motorcycles with all the relatable air of a lovable, kindly grown-up geek. The man who dressed up in Dolly Parton’s real-life Playboy cover Easter bunny outfit as a kid. (Yes, really.)

In other words, Keanu Reeves is a prince among men. And with his much-deserved career revival over the past few years, affectionately dubbed the “Keanassaince,” it’s been a joy to have him back on our screens again—whether in the John Wick series or in the return of The Matrix franchise during this holiday season. As something of a reluctant celebrity, however, Reeves’s love life has often been shrouded in mystery, especially given the privacy he understandably sought following the untimely loss of partner Jennifer Syme in 2001. A few flings aside (one of which was with Sofia Coppola, mind you), Reeves has largely kept his romantic side under wraps.

That is, until he met Los Angeles artist Alexandra Grant sometime around 2011. They first became close when collaborating on the art book Ode to Happiness, following which they launched a publishing imprint called X Artists Books. And while the two were spotted together on a handful of occasions in the following years, it was only in 2019 that their relationship was confirmed, with their friend Jennifer Tilly noting that they’d been “dating for several years.” Since then, they’ve stepped out together, to a Saint Laurent fashion show in Malibu in 2019 after Reeves appeared in a campaign for the house (Chic!). They  were spotted at the Italian restaurant and L.A. institution Giorgio Baldi having dinner a few months later (Romantic!). In November of the same year, they attended the LACMA Art + Film Gala in Los Angeles (Philanthropic!).