“What do you think happens when we die, Keanu Reeves?” The audience of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert laughs when the host asks the question. Reeves, with his meme-y aura of philosophic intensity, will surely come up with something funny. He doesn’t. He pauses a beat, then says: “I know that the ones who love us will miss us.” It’s simple and affecting. Colbert is, for once, lost for words – he just leans over and shake Reeves’ hand.

That was 2019. Reeves still has mortality on his mind. “I’m 59, so I’m thinking about death all the time,” he told BBC News yesterday [Tuesday]. He thinks the habit is a “good thing” – a way to appreciate “the breath we have, and the relationships that we have the potential to have”. Another reason he’s thinking about death is because of his debut novel, The Book of Elsewhere. Reeves insists it’s all written by the British science fiction author China Miéville, but it’s based on a character from the actor’s BRZRKR (“berserker”) comic book series, so both men’s names are on the cover. The protagonist is B, an 80,000-year-old assassin. B is immortal: when his limbs are lopped off, they grow back. When his whole body is eviscerated, he hatches from a magic egg. But B doesn’t want to live forever – he wants to be mortal, and to die, not immediately, but at some point.

Reeves is, by popular acclaim, the nicest man in Hollywood, and frequently goes viral because of it. He gave every member of his 12-person stunt team on The Matrix Reloaded a Harley Davidson. He gave every member of his stunt team on John Wick 4 a $9,000 Rolex Submariner – a film for which he was also pictured helping the crew carry boxes up some stairs. He’s taken pay cuts to work with Al Pacino (in The Devil’s Advocate) and Gene Hackman (in The Replacements). In 2019, he helped fellow passengers on a cancelled flight book a replacement van. In 2022, he turned up to the wedding of two fans in Northamptonshire.

But there’s also been a thread of profundity winding through his career. His films are, more often than not, “deep”, whether in a hokey, tongue-in-cheek way or a genuine one. The Bill & Ted series is, between the hijinks, about the malleability of time. The Matrix films, with their red pills, blue pills and simulated realities, are often reached for in philosophy seminars. Reeves even sees hidden depths in John Wick. “He’s got this beautiful, tragic conundrum – these two selves,” he told GQ in 2019, in regard to his ultraviolet character. “The John who was married, and John Wick, the assassin. John wants to be free. But the only way he knows how is through… fucking killing people and breaking rules. We’re really watching a person fight for their life and their soul.”