Wow, I had no idea about "shah mat!" - very cool. Everyone says that Keanu is the most terrifying chess player they've met. And Scrabble? Yikes. I can only imagine.

I helped Gemma with her first presenting foray, a slot on a small Edinburgh Fringe radio show. I was like her wingwoman. We then blagged press passes and went to cover the O2 Wireless festival. We ended up backstage, seeing Julian Casablancas from the Strokes chatting to Kate Moss, who was draped round David Walliams. They all said no to an interview as it was obvious we were cheeky blaggers, but we hit gold when we spotted Keanu Reeves, who said he'd do an interview with us if we found him a lighter.

However, cute, fuzzy pandas have a universal appeal. Not all US movies targeted to China fare so well. Man of Tai Chi, produced by Stephen Hamel and directed by Keanu Reeves, tanked at the US and China box office when it opened in 2013.
Mr Hamel believes they had distribution problems but says the experience was far from a disaster.
"It was a great experience and introduced us to a lot of people and those relationships are now blooming," he says, adding that they have two co-productions in the works in China now including Unmanned, a thriller set in Hong Kong during a future world war.
There is more excitement and optimism in the Chinese film industry than in Los Angeles now, says Mr Hamel, and argues that film is the ultimate tool to bring different cultures together.
"They are dreamers still. It's like Hollywood in the 40s - so I am excited about being there and doing this and finding ways of bridging Hollywood and China," he says.

Whereas in a 2013 interview he said he was "Chinese, Hawaiian and English". So it could also be a matter of getting older and more in touch with his roots, and I also suspect his relationship with his father played a part in this change. Keanu had a lot of anger towards him when he was younger, and likely identified more strongly with his white mother who raised him and cared for him after his father abandoned the family. So maybe his reclaiming of that side of his identity is also part of that reconciliation process.

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/bright-walldark-room-february-2016-the-grace-of-keanu-reeves-by-angelica-jade-basti%C3%A9n