He's the quiet man of big movie launches, but Keanu Reeves has work that speaks for itself. Steve Pratt reports on an actor with an impressive list of movies to his credit.

KEANU Reeves was asked what it was like working again with Sandra Bullock, 12 years after they were first paired in the thriller Speed. "I can't explain in words why Sandra and I have chemistry on screen or why we work well together," he says.

His reticence isn't unusual. A lot of his answers begin with a variation on the "I don't know..." line.

Reeves isn't the most loquacious of interviewees and, put him on the platform with Bullock to talk about their new film together The Lake House, and his silence is almost guaranteed. He leaves her to do most of the talking.

Put him at a table with a small group of journalists and he can be more forthcoming, but big public events clearly make the introspective actor uncomfortable.

At 41, he has an impressive list of movies and directors to his credit, not all box-office hits but notable for the sheer variety of a CV that ranges from Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure to the supernatural thriller Constantine via the likes of My Own Private Idaho, The Devil's Advocate and Point Break.

But it was his portrayal of the iconic Neo in The Matrix trilogy that brought his career out of the doldrums and put him back in the premier league.

The Lake House couldn't offer him and Bullock anything less like their first pairing in Speed, a thriller that moved at breakneck speed and demonstrated that he had the muscle to be an action man if required. Wisely, he opted out of the sequel, although Bullock didn't and saw the seaborne follow-up hit choppy waters with critics and public alike.

In The Lake House, the pair correspond while living in the same house two years apart. It is, as you might guess from that brief synopsis, a time travel romance, with the audience willing them on to defy time and space and get together.

The project that reunited them also kept the two actors apart for most of the movie. They only filmed together for about two weeks.

"It helped that we were friends and kept in contact over the years. We like each other, so it was a kind of instant rapport," says Reeves.

He and Bullock have stayed in touch since making Speed. "I always enjoy watching her work," says Reeves. "She's funny as all heck, smart as a whip. It was great to have some life under our belts since the last time we worked together."

He didn't see Il Mare, the South Korean movie that inspired The Lake House, before filming because the scripts are so different. "I'm probably going to watch it now but I didn't look at it in terms of my work," he says. "We had a passionate director as well. He had his vision and we got seduced by that as well."

The pair in The Lake House gradually fall in love with their correspondence turning into love letters. Off-screen, Reeves tends to type his letters. "I like the contact of it. I enjoy the physicalness of it, the imprint on the paper. It kind of has its own independence," he says.

"Love letters carry so much more weight. These letters take them from their ordinary lives and make it extraordinary. It's not just the simple phone call, it's not a quick e-mail. These letters are thoughtful, they take time, they're very personal.

"I know for myself I feel different when I write a letter than I do when I do an e-mail or talk on the phone. We speak to ourselves and to the other through a letter in a much richer way.

"They have an independence as objects. They're like a book. They're not in another machine, they're concrete separate objects that hold that story. You can hold them in your hands, you can smell them, and you can feel them."

The Lake House isn't his first foray into romantic movie drama. A Walk In The Cloud and Sweet November previously gave him romantic leads in not particularly memorable movies.

More recently in the comedy Something's Gotta Give, he played Diane Keaton's younger suitor. "I think it showed the potential that I could do these kinds of films," he says of that role.

"I'm trying hopefully to have a career that can span different genres and different roles."

Where he still doesn't feel comfortable is going public, admitting to still getting nervous before attending premieres.

"I had a few friends over today and asked them what I should wear and tried to relax," he said before the LA premiere.