Keanu Reeves.
His supposed glum demeanor has been documented and riffed on in many ways, including the infamous meme “Sad Keanu” which started from the image of him sitting alone with a sandwich on a bench. Which led to Cheer Up Keanu Day on Facebook and a myriad of other ways to pep up the very private actor.
Keanu has written a book, Ode To Happiness, which on the surface dovetails nicely with the collective thought of the depressed and morose man, starting off with “I draw a hot sorrow bath,” on the first page and “In my despair room,” on the second.
But Reeves says not so fast. It was a just a fun, goofy thing he did for a friend, to cheer her up.
“I was in my kitchen hanging out with my friend Janey, and the radio was on – and this station was playing, like, an orgy of depressing, self-pitying, nostalgic music. You know: ‘I’m so lonely and I’ve been left and my heart is broken.’ It was so voluptuously horrible. And I just started to write on this piece of paper, because I had this image of, you know, that moment when you take that bath, you light that candle, and you’re really just kind of depressed. And it was making Janey laugh so hard, I just kept going, piling on the self-pity.”
From there his friend, Janey Bergman, sent his words to mutual friend LA artist Alexandra Grant to illustrate it as a private gift and it spiraled as other friends wanted copies.
Did the 46 year-old star write this as an antidote to the forlorn reputation he’s gained on the web?
Oh, the internet deal,” he says vaguely. “It was brought to my attention. Yeah, it was funny. But no, the book predates that by a long time. We finished it in August 2009. It is hopefully, in a quiet and enjoyable way, transformative. The kind of thing that takes you from this one place to another – to look at yourself and, y’know, it can always be worse. I hate that sentence: of course it can always be worse!”
You’ve gotta love the man’s attitude!
See more evidence of a happy Keanu below. (Read the article)
