In June 2019, the internet seemed absolutely obsessed with movie star Keanu Reeves. The actor was riding the wave of praise following the third installment in the John Wick saga, had a surprise cameo in the romantic comedy Always Be My Maybe, and made a meme-worthy appearance at the 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Amidst this fervor, an old quote ostensibly uttered by Reeves started to recirculate on social media:
None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.”
This is not a genuine quote from Reeves. While we're at it, this quote also wasn't uttered by actors Christopher Walken, Anthony Hopkins, or Richard Gere:
In fact, the message doesn't come from any movie star. It originated with a May 2015 post on the Sweatpants and Coffee Facebook page:
Nanea Hoffman, founder and CEO of Sweatpants and Coffee, added a message to this post explaining how her words had occasionally been "borrowed" and attributed to other authors:
Be kind. Do not treat yourself like an after thought.
Edited to add: Friends, you're going to be seeing my name on a lot of these posts from now on, mostly because people have wanted to know who says all this stuff (and also because sometimes other people feel free to "borrow" or claim my words, and that's just not cool). Well, it's me. Sweatpants & Coffee is really a lot of my own inner dialogue flung out upon the Internetz in an attempt to connect with like-minded souls. Such as you fine people. So. There it is. This is me, talking to myself and to you, awkwardly, honestly, goofily, and with no small amount of anxiety. Love you, #WeirdoTribe. XOXO, Nanea
For more good stuff, go to sweatpantsandcoffee.com
Hoffman's words can also be found in the concluding paragraph of a longer piece of text that was also falsely attributed to Reeves. That longer quote can be found, among other places, in an April 2016 article published on Medium entitled "Here’s Keanu Reeves’ Message On Living Life To The Fullest":
“My friend’s mom has eaten healthy all her life. Never ever consumed alcohol or any “bad” food, exercised every day, very limber, very active, took all supplements suggested by her doctor, never went in the sun without sunscreen and when she did it was for as short a period as possible — so pretty much she protected her health with the utmost that anyone could. She is now 76 and has skin cancer, bone marrow cancer and extreme osteoporosis.
My friend’s father eats bacon on top of bacon, butter on top of butter, fat on top of fat, never and I mean never exercised, was out in the sun burnt to a crisp every summer, he basically took the approach to live life to his fullest and not as others suggest. He is 81 and the doctors says his health is that of a young person.
People you cannot hide from your poison. It’s out there and it will find you so in the words of my friend’s still living mother: “If I would have known my life would end this way I would have lived it more to the fullest enjoying everything I was told not to!”
None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.”
Although we have not been able to identify the author of this longer piece of text (minus the concluding paragraph), it wasn't Reeves. We found no articles written by Reeves containing this text or any interviews with him expressing this message. We also know that the final paragraph of this text originated with another author.
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