Keanu Reeves On The Record

Keanu Reeves needs no introduction. You know him from movies like The Matrix series, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Speed and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. (Okay, you can be forgiven for forgetting that last one.) What you might not know is the 50-year-old actor is a diehard motorcyclist with a cool collection of Nortons and some telltale battle scars. But his story, while typical in some ways, is very “Hollywood” in others. Read on...

I learned to ride when I was 22. I was doing a picture in Munich and this young girl had an enduro at the sound stages. I asked her if I could ride it and she showed me where everything was. When I got back to Los Angeles, I bought a Kawasaki KLR600. I rode that for a little bit and then got my first Norton. I learned all about Nortons. I loved the shape of them, the upswept pipes, and then I came to love the smell of them and how they rode.

Over the years I would buy used bikes whenever I worked. In Chicago I had a Kawasaki KZ900. In Portland, I had a Suzuki GS1100E. I once got a 1978 Moto Guzzi T3. I had an AMF Harley Shovelhead in Pittsburgh. When I went to Australia for The Matrix I got a 750 Norton, and then for the second Matrix I got a Sportster. I also had an old BMW 750 and an '88 Suzuki GSX-R750.

I haven't done a really long ride yet. It's mostly been around Los Angeles. I've gone on some epic rides in different countries, like up in the north in Australia and the Napoleon Road in France, which was beautiful. I'm hoping to one day go through Europe, do Patagonia and all that.

I only rode in the dirt once with a girlfriend's family that had the motorhome and all that. I don't remember where it was, but I remember the hole I fell into! I saw a little lake, grabbed the brakes and slid right into a hole, hit the other side. I didn't get hurt though. Since then I've broken some teeth, ruptured a spleen, broken an arm and a leg. All from different crashes. Most of those were just slide-outs.

I've done some race schools. I went to the Freddie Spencer School in Las Vegas. That was a whole other world going from a Norton to a Honda 600, shifting on the other side and all that. It was nice to learn about trail-braking. I like to ride the canyons at night, when there's a full moon, and you shut the engine off and coast downhill. I try to use the brakes as little as possible, just get the right entrance speed, set yourself up and flow.

I've still got the first Norton I bought, an Interstate with a big tank. I put rearsets on it, Koni shocks and heavier fork springs, Axtell cams, raised the compression a little bit. I have a '72 Combat with Dunstall pipes. And then I have a "mutt bike" with a '68-'72 engine; that's a Fastback. And then a racebike that I bought from a guy named Chris Scott of Supertwins. He had a mechanic named Dean Collinson, who worked on my bikes. Eventually Supertwins closed and Dean and I opened up a shop called TT Cycles. We tried to make a go of it, and nine years wasn't a bad run, but we eventually had to shut it down.

ARCH started with a half-finished Dyna. I went to see Gard Hollinger, and once I saw what he was doing, I asked him to make me a custom bike. So we took everything off and just kept the engine. He built the prototype, I saw it and rode it, and it was amazing. It fits how I like to ride: I like being able to cruise but then I also like the curves.