Keanu Reeves has stood on the set of The Matrix and filmed John Wick’s biggest fights. Now, he says building ARCH Motorcycles with Gard Hollinger gives him that same thrill.
Keanu Reeves has had the kind of moments most actors spend their whole careers chasing.
He’s worked on the set of The Matrix, a film that changed what action movies could look like. He’s filmed one breathtaking action scene after another across the John Wick franchise, building a world so popular it turned a hitman into a pop culture icon. And that’s before you count the countless other Hollywood movies he’s starred in, from a runaway bus in Speed to a showdown with the supernatural in Constantine, all of them built on daring stunts and the kind of adrenaline most people only watch from a theater seat.
On the latest episode of Boardroom Talks, Reeves revisited some of those defining moments with Rich Kleiman, reflecting on the projects that have stayed with him long after the cameras stopped rolling. Few experiences have matched the excitement of those career milestones — that is, until ARCH Motorcycle came along and pushed him into an entirely different world, giving him the same rush he felt on the biggest sets of his career. Except this time he’s building the set himself, with a partner who once told him no.
The story starts in 2005, in a parking lot in Gardena, with a Harley Dyna and a very simple request. Keanu wanted a custom seat and a sissy bar. A friend knew a builder, Gard Hollinger, so they drove out to a low, industrial building where Hollinger came out and asked what he wanted. Keanu told him; Gard answered, “I don’t do that.”
Hollinger knew exactly who was standing in front of him. He just didn’t see the point of building the world’s most expensive sissy bar when, as he put it, “nobody would really appreciate it for what it was.” Inside, the shop was a maze of couches, tables, and a desk, all buried under motorcycle magazines and unopened mail, with a press and a few custom bikes in the back. Keanu stayed anyway. Gard had pulled him in without meaning to.
What followed was a bike, and eventually a friendship. Hollinger stripped everything away but the engine and built a new frame from scratch. Somewhere in the process came the question that ended the sissy bar for good: “Do you really want the sissy bar?” Keanu’s answer: “I guess not.”
While Gard worked, Keanu kept noticing something. “This looks familiar to me,” he’d say, “If this is what we think it might be, we should make some more of these and share it with the world.” Hollinger, who used to dream about moving to central Mexico to build bikes, learn sculpting, and maybe forge an iron fence, spent a couple of months trying to talk him out of it. It didn’t work, and the Mexico plan went with it. Gard calls himself a “fork in the road guy,” and he took the fork that let them “leave something behind that we both cared about.”
Keanu will tell you what he saw in it: “I like making stuff,” Reeves said. “I really like being a part of collaborating, being a part of making something.” Then came the questions every good story asks. What is this motorcycle? Who is it for? The name, ARCH, came from there too: a structure, a shape, a bridge, a doorway, a connector.
Today, that connector links a lot of things. ARCH is a motorcycle company and a race team in MotoAmerica’s Super Hooligan class. The story of that underdog run is told in Hooligans: The ARCH Racing Project, a six-episode docuseries from V10 Entertainment now streaming on Samsung TV Plus, the global subscription-free service included with Samsung Smart TVs. A second season has already been announced. The team built its own engine, the ARCH 120 LS, because a real motorcycle brand needs one. Their sponsors include Alpinestars, Öhlins, and Quad Lock, and the series has grown from five race weekends to six this year, with talk of the Isle of Man and the Northwest 200 down the road.
The thrill shows up in small moments too. Keanu loves that an ARCH used to get the question “Is that a Harley?” and now gets “Oh my God, that’s an ARCH. It’s the first time I’ve seen one in the real world.” Fans who know nothing about racing have started following the team, just because the story pulled them in.
None of this is a money play, and Keanu is the first to say so: “We’re not making a lot of money here.” It’s also a very different job from acting. His fame gets more eyeballs, but the bikes, the engine, and the team still have to hold up on their own. That may be why it feels so alive to him.
And the story isn’t finished. Next up is ARCH design, which he and Gard want to stretch across lamps, pens, chairs, and whatever else carries the idea of structure, support, and connection. As Keanu put it, “Also talking about legacy and what can we do with this?”
That’s the thread line through it all. Keanu Reeves isn’t chasing a bigger movie. He’s chasing the feeling of making something real with people he trusts, and that’s the feeling he found on the set of The Matrix. The difference is that this time, he gets to write the next scene himself.
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