re: I actually like Keanu Reeves

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I've had rants. Never have I ever gone to my boss and told them I'd quit if he didn't fire a coworker, holding up a $100,000,000 business venture.

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He has since apologized for it. Pretty much immediately after the fact, actually, and he continues to be upset about his actions that day in interviews because, if you read about him, a lot of what he does he does for others in the business and his actions that day ran counter to his normal identity.

For instance, Scott Cooper had written Out of the Furnace specifically for Bale. When Bale almost bailed on the project after a seven month shoot for TDKR, Cooper was seriously dejected and was on the brink of scrapping the project in its entirety. Bale found out, told Cooper there was no way he was scrapping the project because Bale was too exhausted to work, and Bale did the movie despite his exhaustion and needing to prepare for American Hustle because he didn't want to keep Cooper's vision and money in limbo like that.

Essentially, he did the movie to keep another actor (and director) in the black and to make his art work.

It's funny, but aside from that rant and the public issue he had with his mom, he is well thought of in the Hollywood community from what I can tell. Every actor who speaks about him speaks highly of him, particularly after he gets out of character once a movie is wrapped. But he almost never steps out into the public, which he claims is done for artistic reasons (he doesn't want people in the theater associating the character on screen with Bale as a person), so the few times he does something that shocks people, he gets lambasted for it even years and years later because there's nothing else for the tabloids to talk about in terms of his personal life.