While Keanu Reeves may be “The Internet’s Boyfriend,” the actor, musician, and all-around good guy is exclusively the real-life boyfriend of Alexandra Grant, a visual artist based in Los Angeles. The couple, said to have been dating for the past five years, have collaborated on multiple projects.
“What I love about Keanu and our exchange is that we’re pushing each other to build new roads,” Grant told People this week. “He’s such an inspiration to me. He’s so creative, he’s so kind. He works so hard.”
The relationship had drawn significant interest from the press and Reeves’ ever-expanding fan club, but the artist and academic is far more than just a celebrity girlfriend.
A graduate of both Swarthmore College and San Francisco’s California College of the Arts, Alexandra Grant describes herself and her art as “an exploration of the use of text and language in various media—painting, drawing, sculpture, film, and photography—probes ideas of translation, identity, dis/location, and social responsibility.”
Grant has held art exibitions across the world, debuting at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles in 2007. Grant has won multiple awards for her work, and exhibitions both as a solo artist and as part of a collaboration with fellow artists. The daughter of college professors, Grant spent her early years in various countries across the world, including Mexico, France, and Spain, which “strongly inspired her language-based work,” according to the artist. Grant has taught at multiple art colleges in Los Angeles, as well as in Ghana.
Keanu Reeves and Alexandra Grant first met in 2009 through mutual friends at a dinner party, and quickly hit it off, with their collaborative book, Ode To Happiness, hitting shelves in 2011. Written by Reeves and illustrated by Grant, the book is described as “a grown-ups picture book, a charming reminder not to take oneself too seriously.”
Later, the duo released a photography book named Shadows, hosting an exhibition in celebration. In 2017, they launched their own publishing group, titled X Artists Group. The couple have been very private about their relationship, but started appearing at public events visibly as a couple around 2019, when they appeared holding hands at the LACMA Art + Film Gala. However, they are said to have dated for much longer, according to friends of the couple.
However long Reeves and Grant may have dated, their relationship seems to be a very sweet, supportive one from the very beginnng. As Grant revealed in an interview with British Vogue, their first book’s publication actually started as a kindly personal gesture between two friends.
“The book was made as a surprise, by me, for Keanu, as a private gift,” Grant said. “All our friends sitting in the room got the giggles when I gave it to him — they said, ‘Please publish it!’ So that’s how we got into publishing.”
