The journey of the actor Keanu Reeves from loveable but unserious performer to highly regarded thespian and penseur over the past few decades has been one of the more amusing evolutions in Hollywood history. Those who assumed that he was a lightweight figure because of his performances in the likes of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Point Break have had to eat their words as his minimalist, highly technical appearances have won him considerable accolades, including the New York Times calling him the fourth greatest actor of the 21st century. Now, buoyed up by his new-found seriousness as a screen presence, Reeves has taken another step to display his intellectual bona fides by co-writing a novel, The Book of Elsewhere, with the highly regarded speculative fiction novelist China Miéville.

The book has already received warm reviews (the New York Times called it ‘a moody, experimental novel about mortality, the slippery nature of time and what it means to be human’) and further collaborations between Reeves and other highly regarded contemporary writers would, on this evidence, be welcome. The actor has, however, been self-deprecating about his involvement with the novel; he suggested in a recent interview with the Guardian that he came up with the idea and storyline and then asked Miéville to do the more demanding task of actually writing it, saying: ‘I didn’t want to write the book. I wanted another creator to take that journey. So, ultimately, China has written the novel. It’s not, like, we could look at page eight and say, “Oh, I wrote this section.” I didn’t write any of the novel.’

The relationship between actors and the written word long predates Reeves sliding into Miéville’s DMs. It would have been more surprising if the great polymath Peter Ustinov hadn’t diverted his considerable talents into fiction, and his novels, including The Loser and Krumnagel, are well worth seeking out in a second-hand bookstore. After Dirk Bogarde all but retired from acting in the late 1970s, he branched out into an acclaimed second career as a writer, producing six elegant, beautifully written literary novels that sold in considerable numbers to fans of both well-constructed fiction and those who remembered Bogarde as a star of the Doctor films.

Yet, for some reason, the last few years have seen an explosion of actors seeking to demonstrate their literary credentials by producing novels. Clearly not mindful of the warning given in the Book of Job – ‘Behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book’ – everyone from Tom Hanks to David Duchovny has diversified into a sideline of fiction, to varying effect. It is a long-understood, and much-mourned phenomenon, that the celebrity author will sell books in a way that the average writer will not, and the fields of children’s literature and, increasingly, undemanding crime fiction have long since been dominated by household names whose input into the books that bear their names may well be slight – pity their poor, uncredited and badly recompensed ghostwriters – but whose impact in the publicity stakes will be invaluable.

Many actors are, for better or for worse, choosing not to avail themselves of the services of the under-appreciated ghosts, and are writing their own work instead. In the case of Hanks, perhaps the most high-profile of this new wave of authors, this has resulted in an acclaimed selection of short stories inspired by his typewriter collection, Uncommon Type, and a less-acclaimed novel, last year’s The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece, which was regarded with an air of weariness by critics for its perceived solipsism: it is hardly a stretch for one of the best-known actors in the world to write a book about the industry that he has been at the pinnacle of for nearly four decades, and few believed that Hanks had any insights of particular worth to impart. So Hollywood is a greedy, youth-obsessed and shallow place where vacuousness rules the roost and where genuine talent is trampled underfoot? Colour me shocked, shocked I tell you.

Hanks, at least, has the virtue of being a well-liked figure who people generally wish well. The same cannot be said of Sean Penn, who may be a twice-Oscar winning actor, but who has a reputation for off-screen belligerence and arrogance that was not helped when he decided to publish the would-be satirical novel Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff in 2018. Penn, one of the most committed left-wingers in Hollywood, intended it to be an attack on the Trump administration, but the reviews vied with one another to condemn Penn’s literary ineptitude: one called it ‘the worst novel in human history’, as the Guardian – which one might have believed would be sympathetic towards Penn and his worldview – decried it as ‘repellent and stupid on so many levels’.

It did not help his cause that, initially, Penn claimed not to be the author of the book, and pretended that it was written by his protagonist Pappy Pariah. By the time that the multimillionaire film star had abandoned the charade, most people were sick of him and his writing, even as his celebrity friends loftily sought to compare his novel to the works of Thomas Pynchon, Charles Bukowski and E.E. Cummings. Penn even declared that he would give up acting in order to pursue his new career full-time, saying ‘I have a much better time writing books, and that’ll probably dominate my creative energies for the foreseeable future.’ There was a second novel, Bob Honey Sings Jimmy Crack Corn, for which the reviews were no kinder; the AV Club concluded ‘For the love of literature, read this book, or else Penn might write another.’

There are some far more distinguished actors-turned-novelists; the likes of Steve Martin, Ethan Hawke and the late Carrie Fisher have all written books good enough to stand on their own considerable merits without special pleading from their admirers (or co-stars) and, of course, the great Sam Shepard alternated between a successful acting career, writing award-winning drama and producing acclaimed short stories and two late novels, one published posthumously. Yet amid the successes is considerably more ego-driven dross; I am not sure that the world ever needed fiction by the likes of Jim Carrey or Pamela Anderson, and the less said about the execrable writing from the once-modish, now-cancelled James Franco, the better.

Reeves has been remarkably candid in playing down his contributions to The Book of Elsewhere and many of Miéville’s admirers will take pleasure in reading a new novel by their idol, complete with a light sprinkling of Hollywood stardust courtesy of his superstar collaborator. Yet often, the impulse to write a novel comes from the same ego-driven desire as to direct a film, produce an album or – God help us – release a fragrance. Actors fear impermanence and irrelevance, and the chance to produce 100,000 words of fiction gives them the chance to leave something of lingering value that will be remembered, and respected, along with their greatest performances. It may be an arrogant ambition, but it is at least noble in its intentions. Let’s just hope that the results cleave closer to The Book of Elsewhere than the not-so-admirable adventures of Bob Honey.