Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves might have genuinely tied the knot on-screen due to a film director’s obsession with authenticity.
The Hollywood stars played an engaged couple in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 big-screen version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
At the end of the movie, Ryder and Reeves’ characters finally say “I do” after escaping the clutches of the bloodthirsty Count.
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However, last week, Ryder told Entertainment Weekly that she believed that she and Reeves may have been genuinely married for the past 26 years.
“I swear to god I think we’re married in real life,” she said, claiming that Coppola had drafted in a real priest to conduct the ceremony, which was filmed in a Greek Orthodox church in Los Angeles.
“We shot the master and he did the whole thing. So I think we’re married,” the 46-year-old said.
The pair have reunited on screen for the upcoming rom-com Destination Wedding, in which they play two misanthropic singletons thrown together at a mutual friend’s nuptials.
Coppola has previously discussed the unusual circumstances of the wedding scene, admitting that his artistic vision may have had unexpected consequences for his stars.
The director was “unhappy with a stylised version of the scene”, says The Guardian, and decided to use an ordained Orthodox Christian priest to add more authenticity.
In a commentary recorded for a DVD edition of the movie in 2012, he recalled: “Looking at the film, I decided having the real wedding ceremony as it might be in that religion would be beautiful.
“When we were all done, we realised that Keanu and Winona really are married as a result of this scene and this ceremony.”
But are the quintessential 90s dropouts actually hitched? Nerdist points out that “no legal official legal documents were ever signed, so the two actors aren’t married in the eyes of the law”.
That said, “if you go by the rules of the church, then it seems that Winona and Keanu recently celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary”.
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