Alexandra Grant had already made quite a name for herself in the artist circles of Los Angeles, but it's when she stepped out onto the red carpet last fall with her boyfriend, Keanu Reeves, that things really went viral for her.
The 46-year-old artist opened up in a new interview about the media frenzy that circled her relationship, and how her personal style is one of the ways she expresses her freedom most.
“I think every single person I knew called me in the first week of November, and that’s fascinating,” she told British Vogue of what happened after her relationship with the 55-year-old actor was made public. “But the question I’ve been asking in all of this is: ‘What is the opportunity for good?’”
When asked if marriage interests her, she swiftly dodged the question. “Over a glass of wine ... I would love to tell you,” she quipped. “Love at every level is deeply important to my identity. How’s that for dodging the question? I do not believe that isolation is the way. There is a period of isolation that I do as a painter, but I deeply value the experience of being in relationships.”
Grant said that with her physical presence, she has had an inability to blend in, though she is perfectly OK with that. “I’m a 6-foot-1-inch woman with white hair,” she said. “You know, the idea of fitting in ... if I wanted to look like Kim Kardashian, I would have to have surgery removing about a foot off my legs.”
On the subject of her hair, which has been the focus of many headlines on style blogs and in fashion magazines, Grant explained she started going gray in her mid-20s and was completely gray by the middle of her 30s.
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“I am a huge believer in choice — whatever anyone wants to do to feel confident," she said. "We should all have more options as to what beauty is. There are billions of us.”
Grant tries to instill that sense of confidence in her students. As she told British Vogue, “If there’s one thing I would hope, for anybody who comes into contact with me, it’s that I have agency.”
She added, “I can only say: ‘I’ve given myself permission — have you thought about giving yourself permission?’”