Johnny Knoxville Hung from a Wire While Being Directed by Roman Coppola as Keanu Reeves' Body Double in “Bram Stoker's Dracula”

Angela AndaloroWed, July 1, 2026 at 8:34 PM UTC

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Johnny Knoxville (left), Keanu Reeves in "Bram Stoker's Dracula"Credit: Annie Wells/Los Angeles Times via Getty; Zoetrope/Columbia Tri-Star/Kobal/Shutterstock -

Johnny Knoxville attempted a career as a serious actor before getting involved in stunt work and what would become the Jackass empire

Knoxville, 55, previously talked about playing Keanu Reeves' body double in Bram Stoker's Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola

The actor and Roman Coppola have both talked about one stunt involved in Knoxville's duties

Johnny Knoxville has an Oscar-winning film under his belt, but you wouldn't know it.

During a Sept. 2024 interview on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, the actor opened up about taking on a body double gig in the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film, Bram Stoker's Dracula, unaware he'd be working with Keanu Reeves.

“Stand-in and photo double, the whole movie,” he said of his participation. “I was just doing extra work at the time, and they just happened to call me. They didn't use a lot of camera tricks.”

Knoxville pursued acting in earnest for years before he became a household name because of his Jackass stunts.

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Recalling one of his scenes, he shared, "They had me up off the ground, like 20 feet, with a window in front of me, and I'm parallel to the ground. And that's one of the days that Coppola came to the second unit. His son, Roman, was directing the second unit. So he was telling me how to."

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Asked if he was nervous being directed by Coppola, Knoxville said he was. He added, "There's another time Coppola gave me direction on that, is it was a scene where he's shaving in the mirror. He cuts himself... so I had to mimic what he was doing. We got it pretty quickly."

In the DVD commentary on the film, both Coppolas sit down and look back at the film, with Roman recalling, "One of the things we did, actually the stand-in for Keanu Reeves was Johnny Knoxville, who has become famous as one of the Jackass guys. We had him hanging upside down with a wire. It was very tactile and we were doing all this crazy stuff."

Back in August 2018, Winona Ryder joked that she may have technically tied the knot with Reeves for real on set of Dracula. She explained that during the production of the 1992 movie, director Francis Ford Coppola "used a real Romanian priest" to preside over their characters' nuptials, which they filmed from beginning to end.

"We actually got married in Dracula," she told Entertainment Weekly at the time. "No, I swear to God, I think we're married in real life."

Asked by Esquire recently to clarify the potential marriage, Reeves, 57, said, " 'Are you and Winona Ryder technically married?' We did a whole take of a marriage ceremony with real priests. Winona says we are. Coppola says we are. So I guess we're married under the eyes of God."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”