Sandra Bullock – biography, photos, facts, family, kids, affairs, height and weight 2020

Sandra Bullock biography

Sandra Bullock is an American actress, producer and a philanthropist. She became widely known thanks to her appearance in such movies as Speed (1994), A Time to Kill (1996), Miss Congeniality (2000), Crash (2004), The Blind Side (2009) etc.

Early life and childhood

Sandra Annette Bullock was born in Arlington, Virginia. Her father, John W. Bullock (1925-2018), was US army soldier and a part-time vocal teacher; her mother, Helga Mathilde Meyer (1942-2000), was German opera singer.

Sandra’s maternal grandfather was a German rocket scientist from a Nuremberg. There, in the middle of Germany, where her father used to oversee the US Army’s Postal Service affairs in Europe, parents of future actress met and married.

First 12 years of her life Sandra Bullock spent in Germany and Austria and even now fluently speaks German. During her childhood Sandra attended ballet and vocal classes, was a part of school’s choir and theatre and used to hang behind the curtains while her mother was on stage singing. Needless to say, passion to the stage and art actress acquired from her mother at the very young age.

Years later Bullock family moved over to USA, where Sandra continued to perform in theatre; she attended her school’s drama circle and at some point was a cheerleader. During the high school she no longer hesitated about her choice of career and enrolled in Drama department of East Carolina University in 1982.

First roles

Bullock’s first steps on a road to popularity started with her moving to Manhattan, New York City, where she had to work as barista, waitress and coatroom attendant, while, in spare time, auditioning for her roles and visiting master class lessons on acting.

In a pretty short period of time she managed to score a couple of meaningless roles in movies, but it all changed with her appearance in Off-Broadway play, where she caught an eye of director Alan J. Levi. Impressed by her performance, he immediately offered her a role in his sci-fi movie Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989).

Sandra Bullock in Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman

This led to Bullock finally being noticed by famous Hollywood directors. In the beginning of 90’s she stared in comedy movies Love Potion No. 9, The Thing Called Love by Peter Bogdanovich, Fire on the Amazon, etc. The most successful Bullock’s role in that period of time was her appearance in action thriller Demolition Man (1993) alongside Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes.

Rise to popularity

Sandra got her breakthrough in 1994, following her role in Jan de Bont’s action movie Speed featuring Keanu Reeves. According to movie’s script, a terrorist (portrayed by Dennis Hopper) sets up a remote control explosive device on board of a bus full of people. People have to be saved and SWAT officer (Keanu Reeves) and brave passenger happened to drive the bus (Sandra Bullock) are up to the task. Movie scored two Academy Award prizes for sound effects and editing and established Sandra as outstanding Hollywood actress.

After overwhelming success of Speed Sandra took on to continue the streak of great movies and in a very short time joined the ranks of the most demanded Hollywood actresses. She received the first Golden Globe prize for her performance in romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping, while her role in drama movie A Time to Kill (1996) featuring Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey and Kevin Spacey brought her a nomination for MTV Movie Award.

A Time To Kill - Trailer

In 1997 Sandra received $11 million salary from her appearance in a sequel Speed 2: Cruise Control, which wasn’t quite as brilliant as the original film. However, it helped her to gather necessary money to fund her own project: romantic comedy Hope Floats (1998), directed by Forest Whitaker. Afterwards, Bullock stated that she regrets reprising her role in Speed 2.

In 1998 Sandra Bullock teamed up with another renown Hollywood star Nicole Kidman for comedy film Practical Magic, where actresses appeared as two sisters witches, suffering from family curse and unable to build happy relationship with man. Many viewers across the world enjoyed seeing Bullock joining Ben Affleck in romantic comedy Forces of Nature (1999). Movie turned out quite a commercial success, with critics universally praising acting abilities of both actors, who, according to pundits, sparked with convincing chemistry.

Career in 2000’s

The most notable Sandra Bullock’s work in the beginning of 2000’s became her appearance in comedy movie Miss Congeniality: actress portrayed a FBI agent working undercover as a Miss USA beauty contest participant, in order to prevent the terrorist act. Movie broke box office with outstanding $212 million across the world, and led Sandra to yet another Golden Globe award.

Miss Congeniality - Trailer

The release of 28 days (2000) and Kate and Leopold (2001) was quite successful, however Bullock’s next movie Murder by Numbers (2002), psychological thriller, where actress portrays an experienced detective, left much to be desired and received mostly negative reviews. Famous movie critic Roger Ebert gave the movie 3 stars out of five possible and pointing out: Bullock does a good job here of working against her natural likability, creating a character you'd like to like, and could like, if she weren't so sad, strange and turned in upon herself.

Comedy film Two Weeks Notice (2002) was widely criticized for its amateurish approach to the scriptwriting, but the standout performance by Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant was enough to put the movie to the top of the charts.

Two Weeks Notice starring Sandra Bullock

In 2004 joined the all-star set of actors to work on Crash, which later received Academy Award in Best Film category. Movie also featured such established names as Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser and Michael Peña. Some of the pundits even suggested that the role of the wife of district attorney might be the best role in Bullock’s career.

Crash - Trailer

In 2005 actress received a salary of $17.5 million to reprise her role in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, which was received much colder than the original, but still didn’t went unnoticed nevertheless. In romantic drama The Lake House (2006) Sandra reunited with Keanu Reeves: their characters live in separate time periods and barely even meet, so actors worked together for only two weeks during the filming.

A shot from Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

Next movie featuring Bullock once again conquered the hearts of her loyal fans across the globe; actress masterfully portrayed a housewife, experiencing supernatural events while coping with the death of her husband in Premonition (2007).

2009 was an exceptionally productive year for Sandra. Romantic comedy film The Proposal featuring Ryan Reynolds grossed $317 million worldwide, and brought Bullock her 3rd nomination for Golden Globe, while sport drama The Blind side became the most grossing movie in USA. Initially Sandra Bullock refused to partake in the movie, due to her discomfort portraying a devout Christian character, but never regretted her decision to stay afterwards. Her role in The Blind Side brought her an Academy Award, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award.

The Proposal - Trailer

Since Sandra Bullock won Razzie Award for her performance in All About Steve (2009) just a day earlier, she became the first person to be simultaneously named Best and Worst actress in one year.

After the two year hiatus from the big screen Bullock teamed up with Tom Hanks for the drama film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, dedicated to the 9\11 terrorist attack on USA. Despite the missed reviews, movie was nominated for multiple awards, including the prestigious Academy Award.

In 2013 Bullock alongside Melissa McCarthy appeared in comedy film The Heat as a special FBI agent on a mission to dispatch Russian mob boss in Boston. Sci-fi thriller Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock as well as George Clooney, was much more successful. Movie, released right for World Space Week, received universal critical acclaim and was met with standing applause on Venice International Film Festival. Gravity became second highest grossing movie in actress career.

Gravity - Trailer

After her voiceover work in animated movie Minions (2015) and appearance in disappointing political drama film Our Brand Is Crisis, Sandra once again took a three years long break from acting. She returned on a big screen for 2018 comedy movie Ocean’s 8, a spin-off from a legendary film Ocean’s Eleven. Bullock portrays Debbie Ocean, a sister of infamous Danny Ocean (originally portrayed by George Clooney), barely released from a prison and already planning a massive complicated bank heist. Movie also featured Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Rihanna.

Personal life

After moving over to New York City Sandra spent some time in a relationship with director Michael Mailer, the mastermind behind the creation of Blind (2017) featuring Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore.

In the beginning of 90’s, during the filming of Love Potion No. 9 actress met and started fierce and fiery affair with fellow actor Tate Donovan. They’ve been together for over three years and, at some point, were even engaged but unfortunately broke up.

During the period between 1996 and 1998 Bullock had a relationship with another actor - Matthew McConaughey, her co-star in A Time to Kill, but later turned her attention to rock musician Bob Schneider, who wrote the soundtrack to her movie Miss Congeniality.

Following her falling out with Bob, Sandra started to appear on public with yet another star, Ryan Gosling, who is 17 years younger than her. They met each other in 2011 during the production of Murder by Numbers. However harsh work regime and insufferable actor’s schedules make no good for the healthy family; actors broke up after year and a half.

In the summer of 2005 Sandra married TV host Jesse James. Six years after the marriage couple adopted a son, Louis Bardo, however their idyllic family wasn’t destined to last long. Mass media started to push the story about James repeatedly cheating on actress; Bullock immediately filed for divorce and continued to raise son as single parent.

Divorced Bullock was rumored to have an affairs with such stars as Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans and Michael McDonald, however she found her true love around 2015 with photographer Bryan Randall. Together they raise actress’ son Louis as well as her daughter Laila, adopted by actress at the end of 2015.

Sandra Bullock is a public supporter of American Red Cross organization, having donated $1 million for the needs of an organization at least five times.

Sandra Bullock now

December 2018 was marked by the release of post-apocalyptic thriller Bird Box by Susanne Bier, featuring Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Rosa Salazar, John Malkovich, etc. Movie is based on 2014 novel of the same name written by Josh Malerman.

Bird Box - Trailer