Forbes has posted Travis Bean’s artocle, ‘Bankable Stoicism: The Box Office Power Of Keanu Reeves’. It’s a good read. He includes a quote of Bret Easton Ellis (below) about Keanu and gos from there.
The idea of a movie star as brilliant thespian is just ridiculous—they aren’t. That’s why they are movie stars and not working in the theater. Keanu always seemed to me as a throwback to John Wayne, to Clark Gable, to Gary Cooper. Even up to Robert Redford. He has an unusual beauty that the camera automatically loves and a stoicism that speaks volumes. He’s been working steadily with filmmakers who want to work with him for 30 years now…He has a strange presence that is very effective, a stillness, an awkwardness even that is usually empathic. He is always hypnotic to watch, and this is not connected to technique necessarily, but to what our most effective movie stars have, which is simply a presence, this indefinable thing that are we intrinsically drawn to. You don’t need to be a great actor to be a movie star.