Keanu Reeves famously negotiated a backend deal for The Matrix sequels that redirected tens of millions of his own dollars directly to the special effects and makeup crews.

A closer look

Keanu Reeves famously negotiated a backend deal for The Matrix sequels that redirected tens of millions of his own dollars directly to the special effects and makeup crews. He felt that the artists responsible for making the groundbreaking visual elements were the true stars of the franchise and deserved the massive financial windfall more than he did. While this is widely celebrated as proof that Reeves is the nicest guy in Hollywood, it also serves as an incredibly grim indictment of studio capitalism, where the lead actor has to personally forfeit his own paycheck just to ensure the actual creative laborers get fairly compensated. The fact that a wealthy celebrity playing a fictional cyber-messiah had to perform an act of literal wealth redistribution to fix wage inequality on a movie set is perhaps the most dystopian concept to come out of the entire franchise