|
|
 |
SANDRA BULLOCK BIOGRAPHY |
|
|
| |
Just as you'd expect of a woman who's been
invariably labeled America's newest ''sweetheart'' almost from
the moment she entered the public consciousness, actress Sandra
Bullock made it to the ball with a little help from her fairy
godmother. In Bullock's particular case, that would be a fairy
godfather, in the person of acceleration auteur Jan De Bont, who
went waaay out on a limb to get the little-known brunette cast
as the female lead of his directorial debut, 1994's Speed — the
film's producers had wanted (don't they always?) to shoehorn a
buxom blonde into the high-profile part. The movie was a
surprise blockbuster, critics and audiences alike raved about
the li'l Miss Thang who heroically takes the wheel of the
runaway bus, and the fairy tale was complete just nine months
later when our cinematic Cinderella single-handedly made a huge
hit out of the formulaic romance While You Were Sleeping.
Perhaps Bullock herself best captured the serendipitous essence
of her big breakthrough when she said, ''Never in a million
years did I think a bus movie would open every door I ever
possibly wanted to have open.''
The half-German, half-Alabaman Bullock was born in Washington,
D.C., and raised just down the road in Arlington, Va. The elder
of her parents' two daughters, she spent a great deal of her
childhood touring Europe with her mother, an acclaimed vocalist
whose career in opera offered little Sandra her first taste of
showbiz. Of her earliest appearances onstage, she later recalled,
''There's always a dirty gypsy child in every opera, and that
was me.'' Life on the road with mom began to lose its luster for
the youthful opera-tunist after she started junior high school
and was awakened to the importance of participating in the time-honored
preteen ritual of ''fitting in.'' Showing flashes of the All-American
wholesomeness that would eventually become her cinematic
stock-in-trade, Bullock had fitting in down to a science by the
time she graduated from Arlington's Washington-Lee High School,
where she was a cheerleader and was voted ''Most Likely to
Brighten Your Day'' by the members of her senior class.
UST as you'd expect of a woman who's been invariably labeled
America's newest ''sweetheart'' almost from the moment she
entered the public consciousness, actress Sandra Bullock made it
to the ball with a little help from her fairy godmother. In
Bullock's particular case, that would be a fairy godfather, in
the person of acceleration auteur Jan De Bont, who went waaay
out on a limb to get the little-known brunette cast as the
female lead of his directorial debut, 1994's Speed — the film's
producers had wanted (don't they always?) to shoehorn a buxom
blonde into the high-profile part. The movie was a surprise
blockbuster, critics and audiences alike raved about the li'l
Miss Thang who heroically takes the wheel of the runaway bus,
and the fairy tale was complete just nine months later when our
cinematic Cinderella single-handedly made a huge hit out of the
formulaic romance While You Were Sleeping. Perhaps Bullock
herself best captured the serendipitous essence of her big
breakthrough when she said, ''Never in a million years did I
think a bus movie would open every door I ever possibly wanted
to have open.''The half-German, half-Alabaman Bullock was born
in Washington, D.C., and raised just down the road in Arlington,
Va. The elder of her parents' two daughters, she spent a great
deal of her childhood touring Europe with her mother, an
acclaimed vocalist whose career in opera offered little Sandra
her first taste of showbiz. Of her earliest appearances onstage,
she later recalled, ''There's always a dirty gypsy child in
every opera, and that was me.'' Life on the road with mom began
to lose its luster for the youthful opera-tunist after she
started junior high school and was awakened to the importance of
participating in the time-honored preteen ritual of ''fitting
in.'' Showing flashes of the All-American wholesomeness that
would eventually become her cinematic stock-in-trade, Bullock
had fitting in down to a science by the time she graduated from
Arlington's Washington-Lee High School, where she was a
cheerleader and was voted ''Most Likely to Brighten Your Day''
by the members of her senior class.Following high school,
Bullock enrolled at East Carolina University and immersed
herself in the school's drama program. Fame waits for no
aspiring actress, however, and in 1985, when she was still
several credits away from graduation, Bullock decided it was
time to get on with the serious business of starting a career in
showbiz. With the blessing of her ever-supportive parents and a
notion that opportunity awaited on (or at least nigh unto)
Broadway, she piled her possessions into a Honda Accord and
migrated to the Big Apple. Shortly following her arrival, she
began intensive acting studies under the tutelage of famed
dramatician Sanford Meisner, and glibly fibbed her way into a
job tending bar. ''I said I'd bartended,'' she later confided to
one interviewer. ''How hard could it be? You pour some rum and
Coke into a glass.''
UST as you'd expect of a woman who's been invariably labeled
America's newest ''sweetheart'' almost from the moment she
entered the public consciousness, actress Sandra Bullock made it
to the ball with a little help from her fairy godmother. In
Bullock's particular case, that would be a fairy godfather, in
the person of acceleration auteur Jan De Bont, who went waaay
out on a limb to get the little-known brunette cast as the
female lead of his directorial debut, 1994's Speed — the film's
producers had wanted (don't they always?) to shoehorn a buxom
blonde into the high-profile part. The movie was a surprise
blockbuster, critics and audiences alike raved about the li'l
Miss Thang who heroically takes the wheel of the runaway bus,
and the fairy tale was complete just nine months later when our
cinematic Cinderella single-handedly made a huge hit out of the
formulaic romance While You Were Sleeping. Perhaps Bullock
herself best captured the serendipitous essence of her big
breakthrough when she said, ''Never in a million years did I
think a bus movie would open every door I ever possibly wanted
to have open.''The half-German, half-Alabaman Bullock was born
in Washington, D.C., and raised just down the road in Arlington,
Va. The elder of her parents' two daughters, she spent a great
deal of her childhood touring Europe with her mother, an
acclaimed vocalist whose career in opera offered little Sandra
her first taste of showbiz. Of her earliest appearances onstage,
she later recalled, ''There's always a dirty gypsy child in
every opera, and that was me.'' Life on the road with mom began
to lose its luster for the youthful opera-tunist after she
started junior high school and was awakened to the importance of
participating in the time-honored preteen ritual of ''fitting
in.'' Showing flashes of the All-American wholesomeness that
would eventually become her cinematic stock-in-trade, Bullock
had fitting in down to a science by the time she graduated from
Arlington's Washington-Lee High School, where she was a
cheerleader and was voted ''Most Likely to Brighten Your Day''
by the members of her senior class.Following high school,
Bullock enrolled at East Carolina University and immersed
herself in the school's drama program. Fame waits for no
aspiring actress, however, and in 1985, when she was still
several credits away from graduation, Bullock decided it was
time to get on with the serious business of starting a career in
showbiz. With the blessing of her ever-supportive parents and a
notion that opportunity awaited on (or at least nigh unto)
Broadway, she piled her possessions into a Honda Accord and
migrated to the Big Apple. Shortly following her arrival, she
began intensive acting studies under the tutelage of famed
dramatician Sanford Meisner, and glibly fibbed her way into a
job tending bar. ''I said I'd bartended,'' she later confided to
one interviewer. ''How hard could it be? You pour some rum and
Coke into a glass.''That bit of acting ranked as the rising
thespian's most impressive performance for nearly three years,
as she dutifully made the rounds at auditions and casting calls
and further supplemented her income by taking work waiting
tables. Theater critic John Simon stamped Bullock's passport to
the big time in 1988, when he included a glowing assessment of
her abilities in an otherwise scathing review of No Time Flat,
an off-Broadway production in which she'd starred as a sassy
Southern belle. With his rave review in hand, she managed to
line up an agent, and then broke into television with a small
role as a younger-generation bionic babe in 1989's Bionic
Showdown: The Six-Million-Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman.
The following year, Bullock jumped coasts to L.A. and its
promise of increased film and television opportunities, and
landed her first starring gig in the Melanie Griffith role of
NBC's adaptation of the hit romantic comedy Working Girl. The
show ultimately aired just six episodes, and the transplanted
East Coast cutie spent the next several months scrambling to
find work. Eventually, she traded the stress of joblessness for
the stress of wondering by what miraculous means her career
might survive 1992's Love Potion No. 9, an embarrassingly
B-grade romantic comedy about lovelorn scientists. Though the
film did nothing to improve her professional outlook, it did
introduce her to actor Tate Donovan, with whom she remained
romantically involved for the next three years.
Months of tireless auditioning paid handsome dividends in 1993,
when Bullock landed a slew of acting jobs and appeared in no
fewer than five films, most notably as an eleventh-hour
replacement for Lori Petty in the role of a plucky cop who locks
lips with Sylvester Stallone in the futuristic, Joel Silver-produced
Demolition Man. Silver liked what he saw, and put in a good word
for Bullock with De Bont, a long-time big-action cinematographer
who'd been given the director's chair for the first time with
Speed. The rookie director knew he'd found the perfect romantic
foil for star Keanu Reeves, but his backers balked at the notion
of casting an unknown and physically unremarkable actress as the
movie's love interest. But De Bont persevered, and following
Speed's release, Bullock's marketability went over the moon. The
success of While You Were Sleeping, released the next year,
served to cement her reputation as the hottest thing going, and
she was subsequently offered a seven-figure payday for her
supporting performance in the John Grisham adaptation A Time to
Kill.
A perhaps inevitable sophomore slump began in earnest in 1996,
with the little-seen, critically reviled dark comedy Two If by
Sea, which featured Bullock in an unlikely romantic pairing with
fast-talking comedian Denis Leary, who'd also had a small role
in Demolition Man. The bad press continued with the equally
ignored period romance In Love and War, which found Bullock cast
as Agnes Kurowsky, the nurse whose brief tryst with a young
Ernest Hemingway (Chris O'Donnell) provided the inspiration for
A Farewell to Arms. The final straw proved to be 1997's ill-conceived
Speed 2: Cruise Control, a monumental misfire of a seafaring
sequel that not even Bullock's reliable charm could rescue from
the box-office doldrums.
UST as you'd expect of a woman who's been invariably labeled
America's newest ''sweetheart'' almost from the moment she
entered the public consciousness, actress Sandra Bullock made it
to the ball with a little help from her fairy godmother. In
Bullock's particular case, that would be a fairy godfather, in
the person of acceleration auteur Jan De Bont, who went waaay
out on a limb to get the little-known brunette cast as the
female lead of his directorial debut, 1994's Speed — the film's
producers had wanted (don't they always?) to shoehorn a buxom
blonde into the high-profile part. The movie was a surprise
blockbuster, critics and audiences alike raved about the li'l
Miss Thang who heroically takes the wheel of the runaway bus,
and the fairy tale was complete just nine months later when our
cinematic Cinderella single-handedly made a huge hit out of the
formulaic romance While You Were Sleeping. Perhaps Bullock
herself best captured the serendipitous essence of her big
breakthrough when she said, ''Never in a million years did I
think a bus movie would open every door I ever possibly wanted
to have open.''The half-German, half-Alabaman Bullock was born
in Washington, D.C., and raised just down the road in Arlington,
Va. The elder of her parents' two daughters, she spent a great
deal of her childhood touring Europe with her mother, an
acclaimed vocalist whose career in opera offered little Sandra
her first taste of showbiz. Of her earliest appearances onstage,
she later recalled, ''There's always a dirty gypsy child in
every opera, and that was me.'' Life on the road with mom began
to lose its luster for the youthful opera-tunist after she
started junior high school and was awakened to the importance of
participating in the time-honored preteen ritual of ''fitting
in.'' Showing flashes of the All-American wholesomeness that
would eventually become her cinematic stock-in-trade, Bullock
had fitting in down to a science by the time she graduated from
Arlington's Washington-Lee High School, where she was a
cheerleader and was voted ''Most Likely to Brighten Your Day''
by the members of her senior class.Following high school,
Bullock enrolled at East Carolina University and immersed
herself in the school's drama program. Fame waits for no
aspiring actress, however, and in 1985, when she was still
several credits away from graduation, Bullock decided it was
time to get on with the serious business of starting a career in
showbiz. With the blessing of her ever-supportive parents and a
notion that opportunity awaited on (or at least nigh unto)
Broadway, she piled her possessions into a Honda Accord and
migrated to the Big Apple. Shortly following her arrival, she
began intensive acting studies under the tutelage of famed
dramatician Sanford Meisner, and glibly fibbed her way into a
job tending bar. ''I said I'd bartended,'' she later confided to
one interviewer. ''How hard could it be? You pour some rum and
Coke into a glass.''That bit of acting ranked as the rising
thespian's most impressive performance for nearly three years,
as she dutifully made the rounds at auditions and casting calls
and further supplemented her income by taking work waiting
tables. Theater critic John Simon stamped Bullock's passport to
the big time in 1988, when he included a glowing assessment of
her abilities in an otherwise scathing review of No Time Flat,
an off-Broadway production in which she'd starred as a sassy
Southern belle. With his rave review in hand, she managed to
line up an agent, and then broke into television with a small
role as a younger-generation bionic babe in 1989's Bionic
Showdown: The Six-Million-Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman.The
following year, Bullock jumped coasts to L.A. and its promise of
increased film and television opportunities, and landed her
first starring gig in the Melanie Griffith role of NBC's
adaptation of the hit romantic comedy Working Girl. The show
ultimately aired just six episodes, and the transplanted East
Coast cutie spent the next several months scrambling to find
work. Eventually, she traded the stress of joblessness for the
stress of wondering by what miraculous means her career might
survive 1992's Love Potion No. 9, an embarrassingly B-grade
romantic comedy about lovelorn scientists. Though the film did
nothing to improve her professional outlook, it did introduce
her to actor Tate Donovan, with whom she remained romantically
involved for the next three years.Months of tireless auditioning
paid handsome dividends in 1993, when Bullock landed a slew of
acting jobs and appeared in no fewer than five films, most
notably as an eleventh-hour replacement for Lori Petty in the
role of a plucky cop who locks lips with Sylvester Stallone in
the futuristic, Joel Silver-produced Demolition Man. Silver
liked what he saw, and put in a good word for Bullock with De
Bont, a long-time big-action cinematographer who'd been given
the director's chair for the first time with Speed. The rookie
director knew he'd found the perfect romantic foil for star
Keanu Reeves, but his backers balked at the notion of casting an
unknown and physically unremarkable actress as the movie's love
interest. But De Bont persevered, and following Speed's release,
Bullock's marketability went over the moon. The success of While
You Were Sleeping, released the next year, served to cement her
reputation as the hottest thing going, and she was subsequently
offered a seven-figure payday for her supporting performance in
the John Grisham adaptation A Time to Kill.A perhaps inevitable
sophomore slump began in earnest in 1996, with the little-seen,
critically reviled dark comedy Two If by Sea, which featured
Bullock in an unlikely romantic pairing with fast-talking
comedian Denis Leary, who'd also had a small role in Demolition
Man. The bad press continued with the equally ignored period
romance In Love and War, which found Bullock cast as Agnes
Kurowsky, the nurse whose brief tryst with a young Ernest
Hemingway (Chris O'Donnell) provided the inspiration for A
Farewell to Arms. The final straw proved to be 1997's ill-conceived
Speed 2: Cruise Control, a monumental misfire of a seafaring
sequel that not even Bullock's reliable charm could rescue from
the box-office doldrums.Thereafter, Bullock took matters into
her own hands and established her own production company, Fortis
Films, with the extensive assistance of her father and sister.
The first title released under the Fortis imprint, 1998's Hope
Floats, was a modest hit that rescued the golden girl from her
string of duds. Her resurgence continued later that same year
when she starred oppositeNicole Kidman in director Griffin
Dunne's adaptation of Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, the story
of two New England sisters who practice magic; and lent her
voice to DreamWorks' animated Moses biopic The Prince of Egypt.
Bullock's 1999 release, the screwball comedy Forces of Nature,
paired her in weather-influenced romance with Ben Affleck, and
she kicked off 2000 appearing opposite Liam Neeson in Gun Shy, a
black comedy that starred the two A-listers as an undercover
federal agent (Neeson) and nurse (Bullock) who fall in love
under offbeat circumstances. Next up was 28 Days, the story of
an alcoholic-addict writer who gets a second chance at life when
her partying ways land her in court-ordered rehab.
Ever since she split with the luckless Donovan (who was later
dumped by Jennifer Aniston) just prior to the filming of While
You Were Sleeping, Bullock's real-life love life has been the
subject of ceaseless conjecture, most of which, until recently,
centered on her A Time to Kill co-star Matthew McConaughey.
Despite having been persistently linked together in the press
since they worked on that film, the two managed to remain coy
about their relationship, owning up to its romantic nature only
after it was over. Bullock is keeping just as mum about her
current relationship with musician Bob Schneider.
In the months ahead, Bullock will undertake a starring role in
Exactly 3:30, a romantic comedy that follows the travails of a
punctuality-challenged working woman. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
