Portrait of Paul Mounet [Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel]

This painting and the Internet combined has indubitably shown why none of us can have nice things.

The painting's most famous for all the innumerable #truther theories spawned about Keanu Reeves being either an immortal or a vampire. Sometimes there's a reasonable person who thinks the likeness is a clear-cut case of reincarnation, but that's few and far between. You can see this nonsense play out across miles of search results for Tumblrs, YouTube channels, and likely millions, if not billions of comments around the Internet, Reddit and beyond. Boutet de Monvel's portrait has, succinctly, convinced hundreds to millions of honest, hard working earthlings that Paul Mounet and Keanu Reeves are the same, immortal person. Take that for what you will, I'm chalking it up to troll-tastic win on the part of Boutet de Monvel, or a bizarre marketing campaign for the OG Point Break.

A lot of Keanu truther websites say that Paul Mounet's body was never found, but that's a crock of crap. The New York Times reported that the actor died of heart disease in 1922. RIP Paul Mounet, for you're certainly dead (unless you aren't, in which case, dear reader, bring a lot of garlic if you ever encounter Keanu in the night). The big kink in all that theorizing is that this Boutet de Monvel painting is far from the only visual evidence of Paul's life and decline in age. Paul Mounet was a famous and serious actor of the stage, and eventually screen. Film developed as a medium toward the end of his life, and Paul was able to jump in and be a solid player in silent movies before he croaked. Or didn't croak. Either way, sick mustache, bruh.

Mr. Mounet bears an uncanny resemblance to Keanu Reeves.

Paul Mounet was his stage name, his real name was Jean-Paul Sully.

Like Keanu Reeves, Paul was an actor, and a famous one at that. He made it big in theater, and lived just long enough to also score a few roles in black and white movies. Towards the end, this is what he looked like, and hopefully what Keanu Reeves has to look forward to.