Winona Ryder remembers moment when Keanu Reeves stood up for her on film set

As if we needed any more reason to love Keanu Reeves, the world just keeps giving us more. In a recent interview, Winona Ryder shared the beginnings of her long-standing friendship with the famously down-to-earth actor.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, the 48-year-old actress recalled shooting a scene for the 1992 film “Dracula.” It involved Gary Oldman, who played the titular role, turning into a pile of rats.

Upon seeing the frightening transformation, Ryder’s character, Mina Harker, was supposed to be ‘shocked and cry’. However, she found it difficult to shed enough tears at the time.

Director Francis Ford Coppola, the Oscar-winning legend behind “The Godfather” trilogy, began shouting offensive terms to make her cry. He coaxed her male costars, including Reeves, to do the same, but the actor didn’t participate.

“To put it in context, I’m supposed to be crying,” she said. “Literally, Richard E. Grant, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu [Reeves]… Francis was trying to get all of them to yell things that would make me cry. But Keanu wouldn’t, Anthony wouldn’t.

“It just didn’t work. I was, like, really? It kind of did the opposite,” the Stranger Things star added.

That incident led her to develop a friendship with Reeves, who played her fiancé, Jonathan Harker, in the film. However, she noted that she and Francis are “good now.”

The film won three Academy Awards, and the pair worked as costars again in the 2006 movie Scanner Darkly, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee in 2009, and in Destination Wedding in 2018.

In an interview with PEOPLE, Reeves, 55, had nothing but praises for Ryder, saying that she’s a “lovely person and a talented actress.” The actor also thought they “make a good couple.”

As it turns out, it could have been more than friendship that they gained back in 1992. In 2018, Ryder told Entertainment Weekly that she and Reeves might be technically married.

During the production of Dracula, Coppola had a real Romanian priest preside over their on-screen wedding. They filmed it from beginning to end, which could mean that they legitimately tied the knot.

“We actually got married in Dracula,” Ryder said. “No, I swear to God, I think we’re married in real life.”

During his January 2019 appearance in The Talk, Reeves joked that Ryder has fully committed to their union.

“Once in a while, I will get a text: ‘Hello, husband,'” he said.

“I didn’t really believe her, and then Francis Ford Coppola, the director of Dracula, contacted Winona and said publicly that, yeah, that really happened, the priest did a full ceremony, and Winona and I got married.”

Over the years, Reeves keeps making headlines for his kindness towards fans and people in general. In 2018, the Hollywood star became the subject of online news when the world discovered that he had been funding children’s hospitals in secret.

In an interview, the actor told Ladies’ Home Journal in 2009 that he has a private foundation that’s been running for five or six years. It aids cancer research and a couple of children’s hospitals. This charitable initiative is in dedication to his sister, who won her battle with leukemia.

In 2019, the actor won people’s hearts once more when he surprised a fan named Stacey Hunt, who lived in Slidell, Louisiana. At the time, Reeves was filming the third installment in the “Bill and Ted” franchise near her home.

The Hunt family were big fans of the actor, so they decided to welcome him in the neighborhood by planting a poster on their yard. When the actor saw it, he signed the poster and took pictures with Stacey and her two sons!

We expected nothing less from The Keanu Reeves. He might be a total badass in films, but based on these stories, it’s safe to say that he’s totally awesome and kindhearted in real life!