Alexandra Grant, an incredible artist and all-around stellar human being, has been dating Keanu Reeves for quite some time now. The two are generally hush-hush about their relationship, and you won't find evidence of Keanu on Alexandra's Instagram feed. While many people have celebrated the pair's relationship, especially because they seem to be such a good match, there are always those who get upset any time a celebrity dares to have a partner. Alexandra recently had to file a temporary restraining order against one of these people.
There are always some celebrities whom people are just protective and/or way too obsessed with, and Keanu Reeves is one of them. It makes sense for a lot of reasons: He always seems intelligent, kind, and overall like a really great human. His interviews are a delight, he consistently chooses roles in films that are funny and enjoyable, and he is dating one of the coolest women on the planet.
Whereas some of us can have our crushes on Keanu and just love him from far away, others seem to struggle in this department. Los Angeles resident Cathryn, a 67-year-old woman, appears to definitely be struggling with her feelings about Keanu and Alexandra.
The details of Alexandra's petition state that Alexandra has been contending with Cathryn, the respondent, for a while, and that the "respondent is a stranger/stalker [who has] engaged in an ongoing course of harassment/threatening conduct for months."
Cathryn has even gone so far as to create several "hate accounts" about Alexandra. "The harassment commenced after Petitioner was romantically linked to world-famous actor Keanu Reeves, with whom Respondent is disturbingly obsessed. Mr. Reeves is aware and included in Respondent’s numerous social media 'hate accounts', which are comprised of literally thousands of posts."
It sounds like the stalking has also become a daily event for Alexandra and Keanu, and the woman is a total stranger. "Over the last several months, and ongoing daily, Ms. Grant has become the victim of an unrelenting and extreme course of conduct by Respondent, who is a stalker and complete stranger. Respondent's course of conduct has included stalking, cyberstalking, threats, harassment, and other annoying and alarming misconduct."
Alexandra and her legal team have also stated that the behavior has caused her high levels of distress, which makes sense. Stalkers are always really scary. The team has described the stalking as an "alarming, annoying, harassing and threatening course of conduct, which serves no legitimate purpose and is delusional and obsessive."
Her team has also asserted that Cathryn has an "extensive criminal history (which includes felony convictions)."
Alexandra's team has asked that Cathryn be required to stay 100 yards away from her, her home, and where she works. She's also requested that Cathryn be barred from contacting her on social media.
A temporary order was granted, and the court date to make the restraining order permanent has been set for September.
Unfortunately, Cathryn is not the only "fan" who responds to Keanu this way. As Kayleigh Donaldson notes on Pajiba, "Look up 'Alexandra Grant' on Twitter and it will take you a depressingly short amount of time to uncover vicious screeds of misogyny and conspiratorial spirals of nonsense directed at her."
"It comes from a relatively small number of accounts but their anger is plentiful. If you're in any way familiar with fandom tinhatting or shipper conspiracies, none of the accusations leveled at Grant will surprise you: She's not really his girlfriend; she's a fame-hungry [expletive]; she's making Keanu miserable; she's old and talentless; how can nobody else see what a blatantly evil person she is? The cycle continues."
She also dives into the reasons why a subsection of Keanu's "fans" seem to be especially obsessed with the star. "Reeves has suffered through some major tragedies in his life, and he's also been a constant presence in film since he was 21. While we haven't exactly seen him 'grow up' in the way we typically associate with child actors, there has been a similar sense of evolution that is intriguing to fans and celebrity culture alike."
"Reeves has been a tabloid staple but he's not an active player in the game or as omnipresent as some of his industry contemporaries. His dating history is well-known but not picked over like, say, Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio. He's just enough of a mystery for a particular strain of fandom to project anything they want onto him, and we all know how dark that path can get. Alexandra Grant certainly does."
Unfortunately, Alexandra is hardly the first girlfriend or wife of a famous actor who has been stalked and harassed like this. As Kayleigh goes on to note, some fans of Supernatural have harassed Danneel Ackles and Genevieve Padalecki, the wives of the show's stars, just for being married to their husbands.
In fact, this kind of behavior has plagued women who are in relationships with famous men for decades, if not longer. Yoko Ono and Linda McCartney notoriously battled angry fans while they were married to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. There seems to be a special brand of misogyny and harassment that is reserved for women who dare to love certain men.
As Kayleigh also notes, this type of behavior also bizarrely insults the very men whom these "fans" claim to love. "It's a deeply infantilizing mentality, one that reduces the male subject into little more than a toddler incapable of understanding his own feelings or actions. You have to do a lot of hoop-jumping to assert the opinion that a man in his mid-50s doesn't know his own mind."
