Reeves's own soul-searching has led him to one certainty in his life - he can, at least, take comfort from the work. Perhaps it's a refuge? "I've got nowhere else to go!" He almost shouts this last remark and then starts laughing. Really? Even when sometimes it's held up to such harsh examination? "No, I enjoy it. I really do. And what else am I going to do? If you make films, people are going to see them. I love acting more and more. Maybe 'loving it' isn't the right way to put it, but I'm curious to see what I can do."
Of late, he's been putting that theory to work. There are four movies already in the can. He has a relatively small part as a new-age orthodontist in the critically acclaimed independent drama, Thumbsucker. He plays an undercover cop in Richard Linklater's futuristic thriller A Scanner Darkly, and a disgraced cop in the James Ellroy-scripted, Spike Lee-directed noir, The Night Watchman. But first comes Constantine, in which he's a world-weary, cynical supernatural detective who has literally been to hell and back, and would rather not go there again. Based on the comic book Hellblazer, the film casts Reeves as John Constantine who is cursed with the ability to recognise "the half-breed angels and demons that walk the earth in human skin". The only problem is he then has to see them off back to hell in the hope of saving himself from ending up there, too.
With the excellent Tilda Swinton playing the most bizarre angel Gabriel, some seriously clever special effects, Weisz as a more conventional cop (and possible love interest), and Reeves clearly enjoying himself as a pessimistic anti-hero who is diagnosed with lung cancer at the end of the first act, this is not for everybody. Indeed, die-hard fans of the comic book might point out that Reeves is neither blond nor English - which their Constantine is. "But I hope they feel that we've done justice to the material," he says.
For Reeves, Constantine is not a typical hero, which is why he was interested in the role. "He's far more complicated, cynical and haunted. I thought a lot of this was very dark, but very funny." Does this represent a darker phase in his career? "I liked the material. Hard-edged, hard-boiled, film noir; you know, horror fantasy. It's dealing with universal myths, good and evil, and I like that. I just try to find good material in any genre if I can. I don't want to travel in one direction all of the time."
But Constantine is a man who has seen too much and been dealt too many blows by life. Could he have played him, say, ten years ago? "No, I don't think I could have given the part as much weight. We all have hardships and challenges in this life. The experiences of my life have changed me and informed me. And do I bring that to the characters that I play? Yes, I do." Intensely private, Reeves insists that the contradictions of his life - a very rich man who cares little for the material, a film star who hates being famous - can coexist. "I've been fortunate enough to work in some films that people have enjoyed," he says. "But the celebrity side is not important, because
I like to be able to walk in the world. As much as anything, it's important for me to be able to live life in order to be able to show life."
Reeves was born in Beirut to a Chinese-Hawaiian father (Keanu means "cool air over the mountains") Samuel Nowlin Reeves, and English mother, Patricia, a former dancer and, later, a costume designer. Samuel walked out when their son was just seven, and ended up serving two years of a ten-year sentence for possessing heroin and cocaine. Meanwhile, Patricia took Keanu and his two younger sisters, Kim and Karina, to Toronto. Predictably, his father resurfaced when Reeves hit the big time, but his son wanted nothing to do with him, describing his father as an "acid-taking goofball".
School was not easy, not least because he suffered from dyslexia and found class work difficult. But he was a keen sportsman and excelled at ice hockey and basketball. And at home, his creative side was encouraged by his mother. "She surrounded us with culture and art and we learnt to love ideas - even if we hated high school."
At 15, he decided he wanted to act, picking up work on Canadian television and with local theatrical productions. Two years later, he was in Los Angeles where casting directors found something appealing in this fresh-faced, laidback Canadian. The audience did, too. After a couple of false starts, he made the teenage comedy Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure - playing the wannabe rock star and airhead with such conviction that the part haunted him for years (and playing bass in the now defunct Dogstar probably kept that "dude" image going longer than it should have).
As his career hit highs - from the critically acclaimed surfing movie Point Break to My Own Private Idaho, Much Ado About Nothing, Speed and The Matrix trilogy - Reeves proved resilient in surviving the lows that sometimes followed. He's had a lot more to cope with than bad reviews. The deaths, in 1999 and 2001, of his unborn daughter and of his former girlfriend, to whom he remained close, were body blows, but there have been other blows, too, in the sudden and tragic loss of close colleagues. As he began work on the second and third Matrix films, the R&B singer Aaliyah died in a plane crash before completing her role as Zee. And Gloria Foster, who played The Oracle, died of a heart attack.
On the set of The Matrix, he often cut a solitary figure, and, after filming finished, he rushed to his sister Kim's bedside when she suffered a relapse in her battle against cancer. He spends as much private time with his family as possible and has become skilled at keeping out of the press. When he's dating, the gossip columns usually find out long after he's moved on. Right now, he is apparently single. He's obviously a romantic, but after all that has happened to him, he's sceptical about happy endings. His next film is a romance, Il Mare, which reunites him with Sandra Bullock, his co-star in Speed. "It's about believing in love," he says of the film. "Believing that there's the ultimate person, the ideal who will be your soul mate and that all your pain will go away." And that maybe you can find love more than once? "I'm the wrong guy to ask," he says.
It's the kind of one-liner that John Constantine would be proud of. But you can understand why Keanu Reeves might say it, too.
Constantine opens on March 18
