CVK
(Thanks to Susan Ayoob for this tip!) Slate.com film critic Dana Stevens’ ode to Keanu Reeves is a must-read. Stevens argues that Keanu’s whole appeal as an actor is his “blurriness” and of course, yes, this blurriness is related to his mixed race. Emphasis mine:

Right from the “dude-no-way” days of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Reeves has always been the baffled misfit, the lost soul in a disorienting labyrinth. His specialty is the addled wander—dark eyes a tad unfocused, perfectly formed mouth hanging just slightly slack. His simple, high-contrast face and long, floppy body seem drawn in a few brush strokes by a Japanese cartoonist. His inexpressive baritone voice has a could-be-from-anywhere quality (in fact, the part-English, part-Chinese-and-Hawaiian Keanu was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and raised in Canada). Keanu is not just blurry within movies; he’s blurry within his career, amiably wandering from romantic drama (A Walk in the Clouds, The Lake House) to die-hard action (Speed, The Matrix) to stoner comedy (the Bill and Ted movies, Parenthood).

Also hilariously spot-on is Stevens’ observation that Keanu is most effective not when he himself has a lot of lines, but when he gets to deliver one-liners in response to others’ frantic dialogue:

But Keanu’s best directors have found ways to exploit his cipherlike quality. One brilliant method, on display in this clip from the Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix, is simply to limit how much Keanu has to say. Give the bulk of the dialogue, all the philosophical ramblings and spiritual hocus-pocus, to another character. Just let Keanu affirm it thusly: “There is no spoon.” The let-somebody-else-talk technique serves a dual purpose: It shuts Keanu up, and it adds to his sphinxlike mystique. After all, if Neo needs only four words to comprehend the ultimate nature of reality, he must indeed be the One.

Definitely click over to the article to check out all the film clips she provides as examples. The Point Break clip (mmm… the pinnacle of Keanu’s physical perfection - it was all downhill from there) is a great example of Keanu’s one-liner prowess.

But my personal all-time favorite one-liner is that scene in Speed when Sandra Bullock thinks she just ran over a baby in a stroller, but Keanu says, “Cans. Just… cans.” The stroller was baby-less - just filled with cans collected by a homeless person.