No evidence Keanu Reeves nature quote is real
What was claimed
Keanu Reeves said: “To me, Nature is a place where you retreat whenever you feel exhausted or sad. I’m more happy when I’m surrounded by the sound of birds than sound of people.”
Our verdict
There is no evidence the actor ever actually said this.
A quote attributed to Keanu Reeves, about his apparent love of nature, has been shared more than 800 times on Facebook.
The full quote says: “To me, Nature is a place where you retreat whenever you feel exhausted or sad. I’m more happy when I’m surrounded by the sound of birds than sound of people.”
Despite the fact there are many other examples online of this quote being attributed to Mr Reeves, Full Fact could find no evidence the actor ever actually said this.
None of the posts include any details of the date he supposedly gave the quote, or where it might have first appeared—at an event, or in a magazine interview, for example. Searches for the quote and Mr Reeves’ name only return more memes, but no original source for when it was said.
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This isn’t the first time Mr Reeves has appeared online alongside a misattributed quote—the actor seems to be a popular subject for this type of post. We have written about these posts in the past, as have other fact checkers.
We regularly see quotes wrongly attributed to actors, politicians and other public figures, such as Denzel Washington, John Lennon and Nadine Dorries, as part of our work fact-checking online misinformation, and such posts often rack up hundreds or thousands of shares.
Photo courtesy of the São Paulo State Government
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there is no evidence Keanu Reeves ever said this.
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