It is difficult to separate Keanu Reeves from Neo now.

The black coat, the dark glasses, the impossible backward bend beneath a stream of bullets — The Matrix did not simply give Reeves another hit. It gave him one of the defining screen identities of the late 1990s.

But there was a version of Hollywood history in which that image might have belonged to Johnny Depp.

And The Matrix was not the only major Reeves movie to have Depp somewhere in its casting history.

Across the 1990s, the careers of the two actors came unexpectedly close to intersecting several times. Depp was building a reputation by avoiding the conventional leading-man path, while Reeves was gradually proving that the laid-back actor audiences knew from Bill & Ted could carry increasingly physical action movies.

A handful of casting decisions helped turn those two paths into very different careers.

Two Stars Moving in Different Directions

By 1990, Depp was already trying to escape the teen-idol image created by 21 Jump Street. Edward Scissorhands became a crucial step in that transformation, allowing him to play an almost silent, emotionally vulnerable outsider rather than a conventional television heartthrob. Depp later described the Tim Burton film as exactly the kind of work he felt he should be doing.

Reeves was experiencing a different kind of transition.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure had made him famous as the cheerfully dim Ted Logan, but 1991 showed audiences several other sides of him. He returned for Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, appeared opposite River Phoenix in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, and — most importantly for his future as an action star — played FBI agent Johnny Utah in Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break. Reeves has since credited Bigelow’s faith in him with changing his life.

That role would soon help lead him to another movie — one Depp reportedly passed on.

The Road From Depp to Speed

In 1994, Reeves appeared as LAPD officer Jack Traven in Speed, racing to keep a bomb-rigged city bus above 50 mph.

The movie became a worldwide success, earning more than $350 million and dramatically strengthening Reeves’ credentials as an action leading man.

Depp’s connection to the movie is not documented in as much detail as his later association with The Matrix. But a 2004 Vanity Fair profile specifically included Speed among the major hit movies Depp had turned down during a period when he repeatedly rejected more conventional Hollywood opportunities.

Reeves, meanwhile, made sense to director Jan de Bont for a reason that connected directly back to Point Break. Production histories of Speed say de Bont had been impressed by Reeves in Bigelow’s movie and saw in him a useful combination of physical strength and vulnerability — something different from the larger-than-life action heroes who had dominated the previous decade.

The result was one of Reeves’ biggest career turns.

Yet the much stranger Depp-Reeves casting story was still ahead.

Johnny Depp Was the Wachowskis’ Choice for Neo

Casting Neo in The Matrix was anything but straightforward.

According to composer Don Davis, who worked closely on the film, the Wachowskis initially preferred Johnny Depp for the role.

Warner Bros. had other ideas.

Davis recalled that the studio was interested in Brad Pitt or Val Kilmer and would have enthusiastically moved forward with Pitt. After those options failed to materialize, Depp remained in consideration — but Warner Bros. was also pushing Keanu Reeves. Davis said the decision ultimately narrowed toward Depp and Reeves, with Reeves’ unusually strong connection to the concept helping his case.

And those were far from the only names floating around Neo.

Brad Pitt later confirmed that he passed on The Matrix. Leonardo DiCaprio was involved at one point but reportedly backed away after Titanic, reluctant to commit to another production dominated by elaborate visual effects. Will Smith was offered the movie and famously chose Wild Wild West instead, later acknowledging that Reeves had been right for Neo. Val Kilmer was also among Warner Bros.’ preferred possibilities.

The studio’s influence mattered. A detailed Wired history of the production reported that Warner Bros. retained control over casting and ultimately settled on Reeves. The Wachowskis were initially unsure whether the actor identified so strongly with Bill & Ted in the public imagination could become the figure they needed. After making the film, that skepticism disappeared.

Reeves’ casting proved transformative.

Released in 1999, The Matrix became both a commercial hit and a cultural landmark, changing the visual vocabulary of action filmmaking and giving Reeves a character he would eventually return to across four films. Decades later, Reeves has spoken emotionally about how much the movie — and its connection with audiences — has meant to him.

Depp, meanwhile, continued traveling in almost the opposite direction, through films such as Donnie Brasco, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Sleepy Hollow before an eccentric pirate named Jack Sparrow eventually transformed him into a blockbuster star.

And Then There Is the Point Break Connection

The strangest part is that the overlap between Depp and Reeves stretches back even further.

Before Kathryn Bigelow’s version of Point Break reached theaters in 1991, the project had gone through an earlier life.

The screenplay originated in the 1980s and came close to production around 1986, when Ridley Scott was associated with directing. During that earlier incarnation, actors including Matthew Broderick, Johnny Depp, Val Kilmer and Charlie Sheen were considered for Johnny Utah.

That production fell apart.

Years later the project was revived, Bigelow became the director, and Reeves ultimately became Johnny Utah.

The distinction matters: Depp did not simply “turn down Point Break.” He was connected to an earlier version of the project before the movie stalled and later took a different form.

Still, it creates a remarkable chain.

Depp was considered in the early history of Point Break. Reeves starred in the version that was finally made. That performance helped convince Jan de Bont that Reeves could lead Speed. Depp later passed on Speed. And several years after that, Depp and Reeves were both part of the final casting conversation surrounding Neo.

Their Other Shared World Was Rock Music

There was another, quieter connection between them that had nothing to do with casting.

Both men genuinely pursued music.

For Depp, guitar actually came first. He played in bands before his acting career began and has repeatedly described music as his original ambition. Years later, he returned to that world on a much larger scale, playing guitar with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry in Hollywood Vampires.

Reeves had his own parallel life as the bassist for the alternative-rock band Dogstar, which formed in the 1990s and eventually reunited after a long hiatus.

And in December 1997, the paths crossed in an especially fitting place: Dogstar performed at the Viper Room in West Hollywood, the Sunset Strip club then closely associated with Depp, who was one of its owners.

By then, Reeves had already made Point Break and Speed. The Matrix was coming. Depp was deep into the unconventional run of roles that had made him one of Hollywood’s most unpredictable stars.

Neither could have known how neatly those near-misses would look decades later.

Had only a few casting decisions changed, Johnny Depp might have worn Neo’s black coat, Reeves might never have made one of his most defining movies, and the action-star career built through Johnny Utah, Jack Traven and Neo could have looked radically different.

That is part of what makes Hollywood casting history so fascinating.

Sometimes the movies that define an actor are inseparable from the movies another actor never made. Hollywood history is sometimes built as much by the roles actors don’t play as the ones they do.