Interviews

Miss Unwiderstehlich

"Sandra Sunshine": Ihre High School wählte sie zur Miss "Verschönert-dir-den-Tag", die Playboy-Leser zur Frau, mit der Mann am liebsten ein Date hätte, das Rote Kreuz nach dem 11. September für eine Millionenspende zur Frau mit Herz. Kumpel, Traumfrau, Charakter-Lady und Top-Schauspielerin: Alles das ist Sandra Bullock.

Ein "Star" ist sie trotzdem nicht: Welche Hollywood-Celebrity würde schon einen Einsatz als Moderatorin der Oscar-Verleihung ablehnen, weil sie "es nicht leiden kann, rote Teppiche entlangzuspazieren und im Mittelpunkt der Aufmerksamkeit zu stehen."

Eitelkeit ist eben Sandys Sache nicht. In ihrem Haus im texanischen Austin hat sie außer im Badezimmer keinen einzigen Spiegel, nicht mal am Kleiderschrank. "Ich sehe mich ungern selbst", erklärt sie.

Statt in narzisstischen Anwandlungen zu schwelgen (wozu die rassige Schöne jeden Grund hätte), genießt sie lieber die Aufmerksamkeit von Bob, Luigi, Pony, Baba und Mr. Mustard - Hunde übrigens.

Talent made in Germany

Geboren wurde Sandra Bullock in einem Vorort von Washington D.C., Vater John Bullock war Gesangslehrer, ihre Mutter Helga Meyer eine deutsche Opernsängerin.

So verbrachte sie die ersten zwölf Jahre in Nürnberg, wo sie im Kinderchor der Oper sang, bevor sie an der East Carolina University Schauspiel studierte. Ihr Ziel: eine Karriere als Filmschauspielerin in Hollywood. Doch zunächst verschlug es Sandra Bullock nach New York. Dort jobbte sie als Kellnerin, Tänzerin in einem Gay Club und Hundefrisörin.

Nach Auftritten am Broadway und kleineren Fernsehrollen setzte dann 1993 Sandra Bullocks ungewöhnliche Hollywood-Karriere ein: Innerhalb von zwei Jahren verwandelte sich die sympathische Unbekannte in einen Kassenmagneten.

Tapetenwechsel

In "Spurlos" spielte sie 1993 höchst eindringlich die auf einer Autobahnraststätte verschwindende Ehefrau von Jeff Bridges, in der Sci-Fi Action "Demolition Man" mimte sie die von der "perfekten" Zukunft gelangweilte Polizistin Lenina Huxley.

Damit war Sandra als Leading Lady im Action-Genre etabliert. Der grandiose Durchbruch kam folgerichtig in Jan De Bonts Highway-Spektakel "Speed" an der Seite von Keanu Reeves.

Zeit, das Genre zu wechseln, dachte sich Sandra und schmachtete Bill Pullman als hoffnungslos romantischer Single Lucy in "Während Du schliefst" an.

Miss Unantastbar

Dann legte sich 1995 "Das Netz" des Cyberterroristen Jack Devlin um Sandra, als sie als Angela Bennett schonungslos zeigte, was es bedeutet, der Existenz, ja sogar der gesamten Identität beraubt zu werden.

Ihre Popularität war inzwischen so groß, dass ihre Karriere kaum mehr Schaden nehmen konnte, weder durch mittelmäßige Filme wie die klischeelastige Trinkerstudie "28 Tage" und die recht eindimensionale Grisham-Verfilmung "Die Jury", noch durch echte Flops wie die bemühte romantische Komödie "Gestohlene Herzen".

Nur noch, wenn's passt

Einzig "Speed 2" hatte Kritiker seinerzeit dann doch von einem Karriereknick sprechen lassen. Sandra sieht es heute als Lernprozess: "'Speed 2' gehört zum Besten, was mir je passiert ist," sagt sie überzeugt. "Ich habe dadurch viel gelernt." Was? "Nie wieder werde ich in einem Film mitspielen, wenn das Drehbuch nicht nahezu perfekt für mich ist."

So ließ sie sich die Rolle der ungehobelten FBI-Agentin Gracie Hart maßgerecht auf den Leib schneidern: Als "Miss Undercover" nimmt die wüste Polizistin an einem Schönheitswettbewerb teil und muss dafür zur piekfeinen Lady mutieren. Das Konzept ging perfekt auf, und so beglückt uns Sandra nun in "Miss Undercover 2".

Sandras herbe Seite

Für "28 Tage" hingegen, der eher wegen des schwachen Drehbuchs floppte als wegen Sandras Spiel, quartierte sie sich zur Vorbereitung in eine Entziehungsanstalt ein. Für "Mord nach Plan" las sie haufenweise Abhandlungen über Morduntersuchungen und sah sich sämtliche verfügbaren Dokus über Kriminalfälle an. Das Resultat: Sandras bisher vielschichtigste Darstellung.

Es ist typisch für die vielseitige Sandra, dass sie auf einen derart schweren Film eine Komödie folgen lässt. "Die göttlichen Geheimnisse der Ya-Ya Schwestern" war der Überraschungs-Hit des US-Kinosommers 2002: Sandra spielt eine New Yorker Theaterautorin, die in ihren Memoiren kein gutes Haar an ihrer Mutter lässt. Die wiederum hat drei dicke Freundinnen, quasi ein Geheimbund von Golden Girls, die Mutter und Tochter mit ungewöhnlichen Mitteln wieder zueinander führen wollen.

Neurotisch, aber nett

Nach so viel Frauendrama musste zwangsläufig eine Liebeskomödie folgen. Und wer käme da als Partner besser in Frage als der "King of Romantic Comedy" Hugh Grant: In "Ein Chef zum Verlieben" spielt Sandra eine neurotische Anwältin, die sich von ihrem Brötchengeber herumscheuchen lässt.

Im wahren Leben ist Sandra täglich das nette Mädchen von nebenan. "Ich bin wirklich eine gute Nachbarin", sagt sie. "Man trinkt Bier bei mir auf der Terrasse und Autogramme gibt's noch dazu..."

Sweets statt Scampi

Und wieso sie gerade in Texas lebt? "Ich arbeite in L.A und möchte auch noch ein Leben separat von meiner Arbeit haben." Also keine Nobelboutiquen, keine Glimmer und kein Glitzer? "Das Einzige, was ich wirklich gerne einkaufe, sind Sachen für mein Haus", sagt sie. "Vorhänge, Armaturen, Beschläge und Fliesen und sowas - danach bin ich wirklich verrückt."

Und nicht zu vergessen Gummibärchen - die vertilgt sie in riesigen Mengen.

Cinemar 1996

In "Die Jury" spielt Sandra Bullock ihre bisher anspruchsvollste Rolle - und darauf ist sie stolz: "In diesem Film mitzuspielen war die klügste Entscheidung meiner Karriere." Im Gespräch mit CINEMA schwärmt sie außerdem von Co-Star Matthew McConaughey und verrät, was es heißt, die beliebteste Schauspielerin der Welt zu sein

CINEMA
Die Menschen gehen ins Kino, um Sandra Bullock zu sehen. In "Die Jury" spielen Sie allerdings nur eine Nebenrolle...
SANDRA BULLOCK
Wenn ich die Chance habe, mit einem so wundervollen Regisseur wie Joel Schumacher zu arbeiten, ist es mir egal, ob ich nur in einer oder in jeder Scene des Films zu sehen bin. Ohnehin sind Hauptrollen nicht unbedingt die besten Rollen. Joel war von der Geschichte so begeistert, daß ich einfach mitspielen mußte. ich denke, daß war die klügste Entscheidung meiner Karriere.
CINEMA
In "Die Jury" spielen Sie eine junge Frau mit liberalen politischen Ansichten. Gibt es autobiographische Bezüge?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Oh, das hängt sehr von meiner Tagesform ab (lacht). Manchmal führe ich mich auf wie eine kämpferische Linke, an anderen Tagen vertrete ich eher rechte Positionen. Das kommt ganz auf das Thema an. Aber in bezug auf "Die Jury" haben Sie recht. Ich kann mich mit Ellen Roark voll und ganz identifizieren. Ihre Überzeugungen kommen meinen eigenen sehr nahe.
CINEMA
Gilt das auch für die Todesstrafe?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Ich glaube nicht an die Todesstrafe. Für mich macht es keinen Sinn, einen Menschen zu töten, der das Leben eines anderen auf dem Gewissen hat. Das hat mit Gerechtigkeit nichts zu tun. Ganz abgesehen davon, daß die Tatsache, ob du zum Tode verurteilt wirst oder nicht, auch davon abhängt, ob du genug Geld hast, um dir einen guten Anwalt zu leisten.
CINEMA
Wenn all die Artikel, die über Sie geschrieben wurden, der Wahrheit entsprechen, dann müssen Sie der zuvorkommendste und liebenswürdigste Mensch auf der Welt sein...
SANDRA BULLOCK
Ist das nicht schrecklich...? (lacht)
CINEMA
Gibt es keine Schattenseiten im Leben der Sandra Bullock?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Oh doch, sehr viele sogar. Daß ich von Kollegen und Journalisten so positiv gesehen werde, liegt natürlich daran, daß sie mich nicht als Privatperson, sondern in einem professionellen Umfeld erleben. Ich bemühe mich, allen Menschen mit dem gleichen Respekt zu begegnen. Nichts regt mich soauf wie die Arroganz von Leuten, die sich für was Besseres halten.
CINEMA
Sie sind in Deutschland und den USA aufgewachsen, Ihre Eltern waren viel auf Reisen. Ist Ihre Toleranz auch das Ergebnis dieser multikulturellen Erziehung?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Ganz bestimmt sogar. Als Kind habe ich dieses Leben gehaßt, doch im nachhinein denke ich: Was Besseres hätte mir gar nicht passieren können. Als ich 12 Jahre alt war, sind meine Eltern von Deutschland nach Amerika gezogen. In dieser Zeit, zu Beginn der Pubertät, fällt es einem besonders schwer zu akzeptieren, daß man anders ist als die anderen. Jeder von uns kennt das Gefühl, abgelehnt oder ungerecht behandelt zu werden. Als Kind habe ich dies besonders schmerzhaft erlebt. Ich habe daraus gelernt, mir selbst und allen anderen mit Achtung zu begegnen.
CINEMA
Welche Ihrer Eigenschaften sind typisch amerikanisch, welche sind typisch europäisch?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Meine Eßgewohnheiten sind sehr amerikanisch (lacht). Die Lust, neue Erfahrungen zu sammeln, die Bereitschaft, mich in Situationen zu begeben, die mir fremd sind, ist dagegen wohl eher europäisch geprägt. Menschen, die ihr ganzes Leben an einem Ort verbracht haben, sind in der Regel sehr ängstlich, wenn es darum geht, sich auf Unbekanntes einzulassen.
CINEMA
Verdirbt Erfolg eigentlich den Charakter?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Nein, nicht unbedingt. Es ist sogar so, daß sich die Menschen in deiner Umgebung schneller verändern als du selbst. Aber der Erfolg nimmt dir viele Freiheiten, die du vorher für selbstverständlich gehalten hast. Wenn ich einkaufen gehe oder mich zum Essen verabrede, wird daraus sofort ein Medienereignis. Und wenn ich mich einen Moment zu lang mit dem Kassierer im Supermarkt unterhalte, bin ich mit ihm verheiratet, bevor ich den Laden verlassen habe (lacht). Ist das nicht kurios?
CINEMA
Und wie gehen Sie damit um?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Im Laufe der Zeit lernst du, vorsichtiger zu sein. Du stellst fest, daß die Kreise, in denen du dich bewegst, enger werden. Und du mußt natürlich auf manches verzichten. Aber ich will mich nicht beklagen. Ich mag mein Leben, so wie es ist.
CINEMA
Und wie erholen Sie sich von dem Streß, ein Filmstar zu sein?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Indem ich mich, so oft es geht, zurückziehe. Dafür bin ich geradezu berüchtigt. Ich nehme mir einfach die Freiheit, möglichst viel Zeit mit Dingen zu verbringen, die mir Spaß machen: Bergsteigen und Salsa-Tanzen zum Beispiel. Die meisten meiner Freunde kenne ich noch aus der Highschool oder aus meiner Zeit als Kellnerin in New York. Sie sorgen dafür, daß ich mit beiden Beinen auf dem Boden bleibe.
CINEMA
Bei den Dreharbeiten zu "The Thing Called Love" haben Sie River Phoenix kennengelernt. Hatten Sie damals das Gefühl, daß er mit seinem Leben spielt und jung sterben wird?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Ich kenne viele Menschen, die riskant leben. Und du weißt nie, wie es ausgeht. Wenn ich die Zeichen richtig gedeutet hätte, hätte ich sicher etwas getan. Aber wer weiß schon, was richtig ist... River war ein Engel, ein begnadeter Schauspieler. Aber ich glaube, er ist einfach nicht damit fertig geworden, wie brutal das Leben sein kann. Der Druck, der auf ihm lastete, war irgendwann zu groß.
CINEMA
Sie selbst haben kaum Probleme, mit diesem Druck fertig zu werden. Wie steht es mit Matthew McConaughey?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Matthew ist wunderbar, ich habe ihm einfach gesagt:'Bleib bei mir, und hör' auf mich, dann kann dir nichts passieren.' (lacht) Dabei habe ich wahrscheinlich mehr von ihm gelernt als umgekehrt. Seine Art, mit den Dingen umzugehen und sein Leben zu leben, ist beeindruckend.
CINEMA
Was hat Sie am meisten an ihm fasziniert?
SANDRA BULLOCK
Sein Charakter. Ich habe in meinem Leben nur wenige Menschen getroffen, die mir so ans Herz gewachsen sind wie Matthew. Er hat mir geholfen, zu mir selbst zurückzufinden. Matthew ist ein ganz außergewöhnlicher Mensch, er gibt mir Halt und Stärke.
CINEMA
Das klingt fast, als könnte daraus mehr werden als nur eine gute Freundschaft...
SANDRA BULLOCK
Oh, Sie meinen, ich sei verliebt (lacht). Nein, nein. Und das ist ja gerade das Tolle daran... Warum werde ich jetzt rot? (lacht) Vor der Kamera ist es ganz einfach, so zu tun, als sei man verliebt. Dabei kann das Gefühl von Nähe und Intimität sehr viel größer sein, wenn man diese Grenze nicht überschreitet. Ich glaube schon, daß es in der Beziehung zwischen Matthew und mir sehr viel Liebe gibt. Wahrscheinlich weil von Anfang an feststand, daß wir einander irgendwann begegnen würden.

copyright © Cinema Magazine Germany

Petra (Dezember 1998)

Sandra Bullock – Pool Position

Sie ist der Goldfisch im Haifischbecken Hollywood: Doch Sandra Bullock, derzeit mit zwei Filmen im Kino, will nicht nur dauernd hübsch glänzen. Uns erzählte sie warum...

Auf Sandra Bullock lastet ein Fluch.

Detour Magazine (February 96)

When Detour first asked me if I wanted to interview actress Sandra Bullock, my response was something along the lines of, "Sure, who's Sandra Bullock?" Of course, that was three years ago.It was January of 1993, and Bullock was doing her first-ever magazine interviews to promote three films you probably didn't see- The Vanishing, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, and The Thing Called Love. We met in the pouring rain at a coffee house on Beverly Boulevard in L.A. The adjectives that Hollywood types throw around to describe her- and are currently trying to clone; easygoing, accessible, girl-next-door, et al- were pretty hard to miss, even under a baggy sweater and blue jeans. But what I found most refreshing about her was her ability to make fun of herself. It's not everyday you meet an actor who will cop to repeated viewings of Xanadu, describe her sole foray into on-screen sex as looking like a game of Twister, and marvel with embarrassment that her publicist was able to cobble together a four-page bio out of a handful of little-seen films and a failed TV series.Today, Sandra Bullock's bio is still four pages, it's just packed a lot tighter. Not long after we met, she was cast opposite Sylvester Stallone in the futuristic shoot-em-up/Taco Bell tie-in, Demolition Man. Next came Speed, the film that not only bumped Bullock up to the A-list, but proved that she can wear one outfit for an entire movie and still keep us rooting for her. Nineteen-ninety-five gave the actress the chance to prove she could open a movie on her own. So she did, twice. While You Were Sleeping was the year's warmest and fuzziest hit and The Net, well, it gave her a chance to show off those mouse skills.Bullock is admittedly taking a step back in '96, starring with Denis Leary in the "edgy, offbeat, small film" Two If By Sea. Later in the year, she'll turn up in a supporting role in Joel Schumacher's star-studded adaptation of the John Grisham novel, A Time To Kill.I've flown to Jackson, Mississippi, where A Time To Kill is shooting, to interview the actress.

Just before I left L.A., it was announced that Bullock was going to earn over $10 million to star in Ghandi and Chaplin director Richard Attenborough's In Love and War. In three short years, she's gone from the girl nobody could quite place to the girl everybody wants a piece of. As I wait for her to arrive, I'm wondering whether Sandra Bullock, with all that's happened, can still get a kick out of things like Xanadu and the Osmonds CD I brought along as an ice-breaker, or whether her head will be swollen beyond the dimensions of my $50-a-night-hotel-room door. Can the $10 million girl still laugh at herself? I'm about to find out.

I brought you an Osmonds CD. Twenty-five hits on one disc.
Look, it's all teeth.
Don't sweat it. I got it for free.
Free is the best. Anything free is good.
You must get tons of stuff for free.
Every time I say I like something, it shows up. Once I said that I like the Principal Secret, from Victoria Principal's infomercial. A month later, the entire kit was on my doorstep.
Do you suppose she dropped it off herself?
She might have, but she would probably have wanted to come in and give me a facial. Look how I'm dressed. Take you back anywhere? The first interview we ever had, I wore the same exact thing. I couldn't find the original sweater, but this was close, and the jeans.
I'm so touched. I hope you've washed them. So tell me about your new movie, Two If By Sea.
I just saw it, and I was shocked. I don't know whether I was pleased or embarrassed, but I totally veered away from what is comfortable to me. I play a cashier from New Jersey who's been in a relationship for seven years, and wants more. Her boyfriend, Denis Leary, is a no-good art thief, and she's going on this last job to make sure he doesn't screw it up. I really wanted to go into uncharted waters and do things that no one would expect me to do- probably no one would want to see me do- but let's see what happens.
Then there's A Time To Kill. You play a supporting role, right?
Yeah. It was a good lesson for me in how to listen rather than having the luxury of the joke or the pratfall, which is easy for me to do.
Who do you play?
Ellen Rourke. She's really smart and edgy and very sexual. She can hang with the boys, pat them on the butt, that type of thing.
Do you do a little butt patting?
I do a little butt watching. I look at Matthew McConaughey's naked butt.
He's a newcomer. How's the tush?
What's funny is I couldn't bring myself to look at it. I just saw the side as I lifted up the shirt, but then I walked on, but he's really fit. Baby got back. He's really going to take off after this. It's nice to be in a film where everybody's better than me: Samuel Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Brenda Fricker, Oliver Platt, both Sutherlands, Charles Dutton. The list goes on and on. This film also has a great message in it. I think for once, in a long time, we're putting out a film that addresses issues that are on everyone's minds. This film is about black and white, it's about justice and it's about family. We're in this small town of Canton, Mississippi, and the film has brought together people who could have lived right next door to each other and have never spoken because it was a black/white issue. To see these people coming together and relating, you just want to cry.
What do you remember observing about the way different races related when you were growing up?
I wasn't raised thinking somebody was black or white. My best friend in school was black and it didn't register until five years ago that there should have been an issue there, and it never was. He's just the best friend I've ever had.
Since this is a Joel Schumacher film, you know you're going to look incredible.
This is the first time anybody has taken a great deal of concern in how I look. I went through a 100 pairs of jeans to find the perfect ones.You have to maximize that butt.As Joel says, "We want it to look like an apple." He's so great. Every idiosyncrasy that a person has, he loves.
Like?
Like putting my sexuality on my sleeve. In other films, there's nothing like a big old sweater or your hair in your face to make me feel okay. In this, I wear tight jeans, tank tops, bare arms. He took away every crutch I had.
Then next year you're going to film Sir Richard Attenborough's In Love and War. How did that come about?
He watched my work and said, "This is something that somebody needs to pull out of her," and I love that, because I've done all my tricks. I'm tired of myself. I don't want anybody to say, "You do what you're good at." I want somebody to say, "You are going to do this."
Is he going to be your first Sir?
He's a Lord. He was upgraded.
You're going to play the nurse who has a love affair with Ernest Hemingway, played by Chris O'Donnell. Any chance you can get him to do a scene in the Robin costume just for kicks?
Joel had a funny story about that. He truly believes that Chris paid off the costume department, because his....um....Codpiece?....was so much more, shall we say, powerful than the Batman one. That's something I didn't notice, oddly enough, when I saw it.You were too mesmerized by that Bat-butt.Joel said they didn't want to put that close-up in there, but when I saw it, I screamed. I was on a plane and I was like, "Aaaah!"
I read where Attenborough said that this will be the first time you get to play your own age. What do you think about that?
It's good. I've done the happy-go-lucky goofball, which I am to a degree, but there's a whole other side of just being a woman.
I've read that you're getting over $10 million for this film. Do you find it odd that your salary is printed in the newspaper?
I find it hysterical. When I decide to do a film I tell the business people not to tell me what the money is. Period. I say, "Come back at the end and tell me what you guys have worked out." It just happens to be right now that that is such a statement for not only where you are in your career, but it seems to be something that people take a great interest in in representing women and saying, "It's about time." That's a nice quality of the money. The other great quality is that I immediately hand it over to my father and say, "You're in charge of this." You can secure your family for the rest of their lives. I don't think twice about saying, "I'm taking my best friends to Hawaii."
Is it hard to trust the new people you meet?
I trust everyone until they give me a reason not to. I'm still very cautious. I don't get my diary and go, "Here.""Here are some x-rays I've just had done.""See how my prostate's looking this week." That's the hardest thing about this. You're still doing the same things, your friends are doing the same things, but the people around you sort of do different things. You find out about people's intentions pretty quickly.
What qualities can you not deal with?
I can't deal with people who taint all the goodness around them to make the goodness feel as rotten as they do- because I was there. Two years ago, I was the victim: "Nothing works for me, everyone is against me." Then you look at yourself and go, "I'm the problem." It's so simple what I like: people who know what they want out of life- whether they want to be a shoelace maker, I don't care, just have passion, and I'll go along with you.
I understand you've started your own production company. What's it called?
Fortis Films. It means strength and perseverance in Latin. I'd given this woman I work with a ring to years ago that said "Fortis" because she was going through hard times, and that day I was trying to figure out the company name, she goes "What about this?" (flips the bird) and I was like, "That's it."
I hear you're producing short films.
Yeah. We made a 20-minute one called The Mailman, and it got into Sundance. The next ones called Making Sandwhiches, about a couple who run a sandwhich shop. This is something that I wrote and I can't wait to make it.
You know you've made it when Barbara Walters wants to hang with you. Late last year, Sandra Bullock welcomed Walters to her rented Mississippi home for a heart to heart and some trout fishing. Aside from discussing Bullock's break-up with Tate Donovan, the most dishy tidbit Walters seved up was that the actress had lied about her age. Ironically, Bullock's mystery age was something she had laughed about with me three years ago.
"I lied and said I was older to get the part in Love Potion No. 9," she told me. After a while, you have no idea how old you are because you've lied so many times. I always said I would never lie, but once, when I didn't, it worked against me. I figure, keep them guessing." These days Bullock says she's the big 3-0, and fine with it.
What's it like talking to Barbara Walters?
I couldn't believe I was talking to her. It's like, "What am I going to cry about? I have nothing to cry about."
Do you worry about being overexposed?
Absolutely. I need to lay low for a while. People are going to get sick of me. The bummer about it is in order to lay low, you have to stop working, and I don't want to do that.
Are there things you can't do anymore given your high profile?
I can't pick my nose in the car. I can't leave the house looking too much like a scum queen. I love dancing, and that's hard, because whoever's with me gets pegged as the new husband.
If you could be anonymous for one day.....
I'd go in my backyard in my underwear and know nobody gave a crap, not going, "There's somebody watching me."
Do you feel that people are watching you?
I know people are watching. My neighbors watch. They sold out this wedding that I had for my friends Mark and Joel. The entire press corps was there videotaping. I felt bad because it was such a beautiful ceremony. I did a reading from Dr. Seuss's Oh, the places you will go, and then added my own rhyme to say how I felt, and everyone was watching me saying, "She's going down, she's going down."
Meaning, "She's going to start crying"?
Yeah, which I did. They said no one could understand tha last two sentences.
All of a sudden subtitles appear in front of you.
Exactly. So I hope my friends didn't feel like it was ruined by the press. What was great about it is that it sent out a really good message.
What's the worst thing you've ever read about yourself?
The ex-girlfriend of somone I was seeing sold a story and said that he had said that I wouldn't make a good mother, and that I was a phony and that I made him cringe. Out of all the things that were said- that apparently there was an affair going on- I could have cared less. It was that somebody had said that I wouldn't make a good mother- and that's something that I always knew I would be great at. It really hurt my feelings that someone could lie and say that, and I knew it was a lie because something like that would never have come out of this person's mouth. It just shocked me so much that somebody could rock me to the very thing that means the most to me, and I've never even met the person. The things that have happened to me this year bring out some ugly qualities in people that I can't possibly understand, but I'm a true believer in karma. You get what you give, whether it's bad or good.
I just saw David Schwimmer's high school production of Anything Goes on Extra. Has any old stuff of yours started popping up?
Apparently, my Jurassic Park audition is showing up. I've got a lot of bad work out there, but if it wasn't for that work I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't have known how to hit my mark or find my light. I'd be sitting in the dark 50 feet off my mark.
Sometimes when you see people reach a certain level of fame you see them do something insane, and you wonder if they have anyone around them who will be blatantly honest.
I think I have a good group of people around me. My parents and my sister are brutally honest. I've made mistakes, and I know why I made them, but I made that choice. Nobody's ever made a choice for me. I was lucky, because it happened to me later. If I had been 18, it would have destroyed me. I was immature. I'm still immature, but now I know what kind of immature I am, and I can snap out of that and be an adult when I have to be.
Speaking of mature, we've never discussed your cheerleading career. What was your specialty?
Back handsprings and aerials. I basically became a cheerleader so I could see my boyfriend, because I had a very strict mom. That was my way of being a bad girl."Mom, if you don't let me see him, I'm going to cheer and cheer and cheer."Which was the worst thing, because my dad was a voice teacher and I was going to ruin my voice, so I had to learn to cheer from the diaphram. I sounded like a truck driver.
What was your favorite cheer?
"First and Ten, Do It Again" because I had no idea what first and ten was, and I didn't have the balls to ask.
Why haven't we seen your acrobatic ability in a movie? I mean, would it have killed you to do a cartwheel in While You Were Sleeping?
I'll try to do one into the Attenborough film. All of a sudden in the hospital..."Nurse, can you get that I.V?"...and I'll do a flip and then act as though nothing happened.
What's something that you became a celebrity too late to enjoy that you would have loved, like doing The Muppet Show, for example?
They're doing The Muppet Show again! I'm going on it! I love The Muppet Show.
Well, there's your cartwheel.
You might be right, but the stage is so small.
What's something you have been offered that you would love to do, but it would
probably be a tacky career move?
I got a call to host "The Face of the 90's " pageant. I wanted to do it just for the cheese factor, just to see how panicked the girls were backstage, because I was a contestant in the Tobacco Queen Festival, don't you know.
No, I didn't know. I can't believe you've been holding that back.
I needed money for school. This drag queen from school put me in a Bob Mackie gown, piled my hair up and taught me how to walk. He was going, "Stop clunking!" Of course, the tobacco-company owner's daughter won, but I did a spicy little jazz number for my talent. That's what's going to show up on video.

The next morning, Bullock picks me up for breakfast, and as she barrels onto the highway in her black jeep, it dawns on me that I'm riding shotgun with one of the most dexterous drivers in screen history. I'm reminded of something she told me back in '93. When I asked if she read her own reviews she said, "My first review for the TV movie The Bionic Showdown said I was 'as interesting as a bus ride.' " Perhaps Speed was her way of saying to that particular critic, "I've got your interesting bus ride right here."
Did Speed make you a more aggressive driver?
I've always been an aggressive driver.
Is there going to be a sequel?
There's talk. If they can't come up with something as thrilling and clever as the first one, there's no sense in it. Jan De Bont, Keanu, and I- even contractually- are saying we won't do it without the others.
I think for the sequel, you and Keanu should have to clean up the mess you made.
That's hysterical. We're in the orange suits. I'll bring that up at the next meeting.
Is Disney doing an Oscar campaign in the trade papers for you for While You Were Sleeping?
Well, they called and said, "We'd like to do this," and I said, "Have a great time, but know that I'm not saying this is what I want at all."
You're not like, "Don't use that picture of me- use this one."
Exactly. Oscars are supposed to be given once you have a large body of work, and you're like 60.
What's been your most glamourous night?
The most unbelievable night I've ever had was coupled up with one of the most stressful. The Net premiere was the same night as my birthday. The first mistake of the night we call the Pink Walrus Episode, because I put on some weight doing Two If By Sea, and then I poured myself into a pink Calvin Klein dress that was so tight I was buldging from every seam. Then, after the premiere, I had friends meeting me for dinner, and I get there and my girlfriend Shannon had completely taken over and decorated, and everybody was there. I didn't expect it. Then you hear this chanting from the next room, and I walk in and there in front of me is Melissa Ethridge wailing this blues rendition of "Happy Birthday, Sandy" that would stop your heart. I couldn't stop smiling. Here I was, the big beaming pink walrus with the big cake, with candles illuminating my shining pinkness, and it was the greatest, greatest, greatest night of my life because I was the belle of the ball. I was the queen for a minute. I get goose bumps thinking about it.

In August of 1995, Sandra Bullock was on the cover of People magazine with the headline "Hot! Hot! Hot!" Three years ago, Sandra told me how excited her family was when she appeared in a tiny picture in the back of a magazine. "I haven't been able to warrant a cover," she said in mock disgust back in '93. When I suggested reavealing a traumatic experience from childhhood might improve her chances, she claimed she didn't have one, "except for the sixth grade boyfriend who dumped me for the girl with bigger breasts."
In While You Were Sleeping, did you make up that line where you say you have a flat chest, just like your father?
Well, I've been making it up since I developed. Jon Turteltaub knew I joked about it, and it was his idea to incorporate it. Now I get letters from people saying, "Don't worry about your breasts. I like your breasts. They're perfect." Every tenth letter I open up is about my breasts. I'm the poster child for breasts, but I feel really good in my body. That's something that I had to teach myself, to become really comfortable in my own skin.
If you could slip into a man's skin for one day, what would you like to experience?
I'd like to see me from the male point of view, because I always fear that's it's hard for a guy to be with me. I'm probably every guy's worst nightmare, because I will not listen. Would I look at me and go, "Oh, she's a hot little number," or "she'd be a great sister to have?"
How did you learn the facts of life?
My mom gave me a book called Where I Came From. I could have ended up being a really wild child. I loved boys and kissing since I was a baby, but I always knew that I would never dabble in the cesspool until a certain time.
What's something unconventional that you find really sexy in a man?
There's something sexy about a gut, not a 400-pound beer gut, but a little paunch. I love that because it makes it okay for me to have one.

We arrive at the Cracker Barrel, one of Jackson's down-homiest breakfast spots, and once we're seated, a couple at the next table ask Sandra for an autograph. The three of them talk for a few minutes- about what, I have no idea, because I don't speak German. It is one of the few times of late, Sandra tells me, that she's gotten to use the language she learned from her opera-singer mother, and put to good use while travelling around Europe with her as a child.
Have you invested in an autograph stamp?
Nope, I don't want a stamp. If it takes me three years to sign them, I'll take three years.
Were you ever a girl scout?
I was a brownie for a day, but my mom made me stop. She didn't want me to conform. All I ever heard her say was, "Be original," but when you're a kid that's the last thing you want to be. Now, I totally get what she meant.
Did you go to your prom?
Yeah. Worst experience of my life. My boyfriend and I broke up two weeks before, and he wouldn't let me dance with anybody, and I didn't fit in the dress that was made because I put myself into an eating frenzy.
Shades of the Pink Walrus Episode. When you were ten, your father was crushed by a bulldozer and was in the hospital for a year. What was that year like for you?
I remember having all these temper tantrums and crying a lot, and never taking into consideration that he was sick. I never thought he was going to die, because my dad is invincible. I remember the night we got the call, and my mom breaking down, and all these family members coming, and me and my sister were sitting on the curb across from the house watching. It was dusk, and there was this sad feeling that something was wrong, and I just remember the car taking off with my mom, and I didn't want to say goodbye to her. Then everything got dark.

At our '93 meeting, there was something about Bullock that reminded me of Julia Roberts. When I asked her if she'd ever been compared to the Pretty Woman, she looked at me like I had three heads. "That's a great compliment," she said. "But no. I get Justine Bateman a lot." These days, Bullock and Roberts are often mentioned in the same sentence, the bulk of which read something like, "Look out Julia, here comes Sandra."
Have you ever met Julia Roberts?
No, but it's so funny, all these references about competition. Why is there plenty of room for guys in this business, and they don't pit them up against each other? It's so stupid. There's room for everybody. I think Julia and I should do a film where we make fun of this whole thing, like we're not even the leads. They just have an outtake of like a premiere where we get into a huge fight or something.
Were you into the Greek scene in college?
I was a little sister for the worst fraternity in the school, that's now been condemned.
Tell me a nightmare frat-party story.
I only have one. This guy and I were drinking shake-em-up's, which is Thunderbird and grapefruit juice. I don't remember anything, but apparently I was sick in front of him, on him, and beside him, and he had to drag me to my dorm room. I didn't hear from him for a week. I was like, "This is the worst," and then he called and we dated almost 2 years.It's like that old saying, "If you love something, puke all over it......"".....if it comes back, it's a good thing."
Who was your first boyfriend?
A red-haired Irish boy. I have a thing for red-haired Irish boys, as we know.
You're referring to your ex-boyfriend Tate Donovan. Do you watch his sitcom, Partners?
Yes, and he's so good. I was in the airport on layover, and I was watching it and I was trying to be really inconspicuous about it because I knew everyone knew I was sitting there.
And the next thing you know, you're on Hard Copy, as the melancholy ex.
Exactly, but I had to watch the whole show and everyone was talking. I was like, "Shhhh!"
When we first met, I had just been dumped, and you said, "The only way to get
over someone is to meet someone else." Still true?
Absolutely. I'm not saying go out and sleep with them. I'm just saying have a conversation and know that they find you attractive and go, "OK, I'm not the piece of trash I thought I was 2 days ago." Allow yourself a week to eat bon bons and be depressed, but then make your friends take you out. The worst part of being dumped or breaking up is the nighttime, wanting to fall asleep and wondering where they are every second of the time.And the second you wake up, it's upon you again.But the greatest is when one day you wake up and you don't feel it, and you just go, "Ahhhh!"
Are you seeing someone now?
Yes, for about 10 months. Really sweet person. It's been rough because of all that's happened, plus I rarely get to see him. But for a year I was by myself trying to date, and it was the worst. I seem to have attracted everyone whose intentions were not the best.
Gold diggers?
They were nice people, but they just weren't suited for me, and that's hard because I seriously thought I'm never going to find anybody that will love me and just enjoy life.
You don't seem like the kind of girl who goes for, I guess you could call them trophy guys, like athletes or models or soap studs.
To me, whoever I'm dating is a trophy guy, but I know what you mean. I was at a point where I was like, "I'm not dating anyone who's an actor," and I generalized, and it wasn't fair, because I met some people that aren't that way.
When you get married, where are you going to register?
Home Depot.
What's the most outrageous thing you've ever done in pursuit of a crush?
I've never chased anybody like I did this person, and I'm not saying who it is. I knew he was coming over, and I was like, "How can I make him think that other people want me so he'll go, 'Maybe I should jump on it and stop stringing her along'?" So I went to the florist and got $185 worth of arrangements and signed them in different handwriting and I played on his nosiness. I left the room giving him enough time to open them all.
Did the guy ever find out?
No. And you know what? It was worth every penny I spent.

After breakfast, Sandra and I stop at Pier One imports, where she buys a small green table in the shape of a frog. "It'll be a toilet paper stand for the office," she proclaims. "Just stack 'em up there like a little pyramid, so there's always a supply.""At Fortis Films....." I say."We care about you butt."Sandra Bullock, it seems, still cares about the darndest little things. She comes off just as excitable today, at the height of her career, as she was '93 when she described how she turned in her driver's license at a move theatre, so she could sneak in and see herself in the trailer for Love Potion No. 9. "I can never enjoy anything when it happens," she said when I asked why she hadn't seen the whole movie. "It's always like 2 years later. I figure, 'If I enjoy this, I'm going to lose it.' " As we get back into her jeep for our final ride, I ask Bullock if she's changed in that regard.
Can you still not enjoy anything as it happens?
In terms of my success, no. It's just great work, to me. But what I do enjoy now is every day. Every experience that I have. Every time somebody tells me a story, I enjoy it. For so long, my senses were really deadened. All of a sudden, everything's become really vibrant. I have more energy than I've ever had. Every once in awhile I'll look at my friends and go, "This is good. Right now. This is really good."
Have you ever been to a psychic?
No, but I threw this Halloween party for the crew here- we all went as the Village People and did "YMCA". I was the Indian. Anyway, I rented a palm reader and she takes my hand and says, "You've been a lot of men in your past lives, and this is the first time you've been a woman, and you are still struggling with wanting to run everything. Those male qualities are still coming over, and your female side's not being taken care of."
Do you buy it?
I don't know about the past lives, but the thing about letting the female side in is totally true. She also said there was pain between 2 people who don't know, and don't need to.
Maybe you have some Shields and Yarnell baggage that you never let go.
That's very possible. I mean, everybody has it.
What song do you know all the words of?
"Rappers Delight." I know all the words, and I insist on singing them. It's very important that everyone notice I know the words.
More important than an Oscar campaign?
Absolutely.
Have you ever been in a music video?
No. I've always wanted to, but I want it to be somebody I know, like Keanu's band. I'd want to be like the sexy, but funny, object of desire.The Tawny Kitaen role.I'll do splits between the cars. I gotta do one thing. (She sticks the Osmonds CD into the stereo and we sing "Yo-Yo.")The great thing about the Osmonds, is that if you don't like a song, it's over in 2 minutes.They're a lot hipper than I remember.I love this. Barbara Walters didn't get Osmonds.She didn't bring Osmonds either. See, you get what you give.

© 1996 by Detour Magazine

Empire Magazine (September 97)

It would be a breeze to get used to the lush aquatic beauty of L.A.'s Marina Del Rey, where the Speed 2: Cruise Control crew are incarcerated for a couple of days doing the press push. Small boats, too stunted in growth to have featured in a cruise liner disaster flick, bob skittishly in the harbor. High up in the plush Ritz Carlton Hotel, 31-year-old Sandra Bullock is standing by the balcony, wondering how much longer she must talk about boats and her fear of water (now overcome), and whispering conspiratorially with her publicist. Laconic as ever, 30-year-old Jason Patric is slumped in a chair eyeing Empire blankly, dressed in anonymous plain blue turtleneck and jeans. He might just as well be saying: "Now don't you come bothering us." There's a palpable sense of ennui in the air and a visible pallor on their faces. They're tired and vaguely disinterested.
It is strange though, because earlier this morning, while under the glare of the TV cameras, Patric was the bon viveur, making mischeif by suggesting to TV reporters that Bullock became a bit of a drunk on the set of Speed 2. He'd also been ribbing hacks (some of whom were buying it) that there were actually scenes in the film with Keanu Reeves. And "Sandy Buttocks" had been charming telling how "insanity" has lured her back to Jan de Bont and the Speed franchise. And as soon as Empire asks a question the rapport kicks in once again and the suprisingly easy Sandra/Jason double act sparks into action.....

Empire: So, I think we should start with the drink problem.

Sandra: (To Jason, laughing) "Oh, you are such a crap! I know this came from you.

Empire: This from the Jason Patric who got Heineken at 10 AM from Sandra to deal with the interviews.

Sandra: "To loosen him up a little bit."
Jason: "That apparently is how she loosens and relaxes."
Sandra: "A bucket of Heineken?"
Jason: "She thought I could use that."
Sandra: "Well, I can pound down the alcohol, I guess."
Jason: "I've been trying to deal with this one day at a time. Let's leave it at that."
Sandra: "I'm just at the beginning right now. I intend to get completely blotto. I'm going to go downstairs and do bodyshots. You know, that was the thing about my stand-in. I would come in the morning and do my close-ups before I started drinking. I usually wouldn't start drinking until about 11.
You want to see my face every once in a while."
Jason: "Some people do."
Sandra: "To show that I was there."

Empire: Just to earn the money? Do you just do the poster?

Sandra: "Totally. The longest I ever showed up was for the poster." Jason: "And don't we look good on that?"

Empire: And what about drugs?

Jason: "Actually, there was very good dope supplying." Sandra: Was there? I didn't want to bring that in. The alcohol I figured would be a good, you know, liquid liquid." Jason: "Yeah, I figure since we're a PG-13 maybe we should just stay with the alcoholism."

Empire: What of the off-screen relationship?

Sandra: "No, it was onscreen. Totally blocked and rehearsed."

Empire: What about Keanu Reeves?

Sandra: "It was a threesome. It's true."

Empire: But you're Jason Patric and you are very moody and serious?

Jason: "Oh yeah."
Sandra: "He's very moody, serious and difficult to work with."

Empire: And what of the on-set tensions? Were you worried, Jason, about the money you were getting?

Jason: "I was pissed. Not pissed as in drunk like you English guys. I mean angry. And I'm not an angry guy."
Sandra: "You do maudlin. He starts off with maudlin guy."
Jason: "No. Happy drunk guy first."
Sandra: "Then he goes maudlin drunk and then angry drunk."

Empire: So Sandra, you've slept with all your co-stars?

Sandra: "Linked with only two of them."

Empire: Why not with Bill Pullman?

Sandra: "Because he was married. A problem for me, I don't tread there. Uncharted territory......"

Of late, it's been easy for Bullock to clutter up the mind. She's been in there somewhere for most of the 90's, jockeying for attention with Julia Roberts, Winona Ryder, Uma Thurman and Liz Hurley. But it's easy to see why she stands out now. There is something compelling about her. Sure, like many of the movie stars we indulge, she's a babe and she's sexy. You've only got to see her smolder alongside top women's totty Matthew McConaughey in A Time to Kill to recognize it. ("He is the best thing to happen to me, a real powerful force in my life.")
It was reconfirmed in July when the readers of Empire decided the former star of such lackluster outings as Demolition Man and Love Potion No. 9 had now climbed to the top in Empire's 100 Sexiest Movie Stars Of 1997 poll. It's not the first time a poll has bestowed this accolade on her. Suprisingly, she doesn't see it this way, herself.

"Aesthetically, it takes care of the battle right there. It is not how you think about me. But I would like to play something like that, where you are a babe. But that was the great thing about the first Speed, it changed the female stereotype in an action movie."

People have always loved this suprising modesty about Sandra Bullock- especially women (note to men: women love dissing female icons like Meg Ryan, Madonna or Patsy Kensit). Bullock comes across as intelligent, honest, funny, pretty and talented. If you were looking for the last time an actor hit upon this magical formula, try Lauren Bacall. Or maybe Audrey Hepburn.
Suprisingly, Bullock doesn't have tantrums. Sure, she did sack her business manager and lawyer last year. But not in a fit of pique but because she wanted to get more directly hands-on.
She was setting up a production company, Fortis Films, and was embarking on her directorial debut- a short she was working on with McConaughey called Making Sandwiches. She decided to bring her dad and sister into the respective business roles.
Family bonds are clearly a strong factor for Bullock. She always talks affectionately of her voice coach father and German opera singer mother Helga, who took young Sandy around Europe and flung her into small roles during a peripatetic childhood.
"But I am of the 90's version of family values. Families are not constructed in the way we idolize them. On one scale you're dealing with divorce and on a more difficult scale you've got same-sex marriages and single-parenting. "So I like it when I read an alternative in scripts to the family nucleus. If I could find a husband as an ideal mate and raise children, that would be fabulous, that is what I hope for. But to say that is how everyone is to live their life and show that on film is wrong. It's limiting. You're telling people who don't have that perfect set-up that they'll never amount to something like that person who has that perfect set-up. That has hurt so many people."

A lot of her new film Hope Floats, an emotional drama featuring Gena Rowlands and Harry Connick Jr. (Fortis Films' first production and Bullock's first as producer) explores this in the most difficult way. "It looks at the dysfunction and pain of establishing a foundation for yourself out of fantasy rather than reality. Owning who you are rather than trying to outrun your family because they embarass you and are a horrible example for you. You will not be able to live any longer if you can't go back and start from scratch. You can run for the rest of your life but it will kill you. Anyway, family, what is that?"

Blimey, not much blueberry pie in that analysis. But then that is what people get wrong with Bullock. While she is quite happy to continue the myth that she is some kind of Cinderella figure, internally she is clearly deeply involved with the darkness of humanity. She hasn't proved this as the multiplex yet, which is why she doesn't enjoy the same respect of, say, Susan Sarandon, but her moment might be coming. First, she plans to take a big break from high profile movies.
"I could only do a film like Speed 2 once in a while. Anyway, you're not losing me. I think I am going to make better choices by taking time off and doing the things I want. If I kept going at the rate I was, I'd do everyone a disservice. I wouldn't be there 100 percent. It's a mistake a lot of people make and I was very close to doing it because you feel you have to drive yourself. Work suffers, you suffer, life suffers."
This is all a little contemplative for a star who is famous for not taking herself too seriously, whose idea of discussing her formative acting experience involves her recounting getting her "skirt stuck in my knickers during this moving scene in Chekhov's Three Sisters and having the whole audience laughing at my butt."
She is unusually self-aware. In some strange, hard-to-pin-down way, she exists just outside of her seismic iconography. Other stars often march right in there to live (and often get lost) in their characters and their myth. With Bullock, she's tugging us by the arm and saying: "Do you get it? I'm laughing and you're not excluded." You detect she's always got one eyebrow raised. For shorthand, lets just call it irony.

"Irony is my greatest weapon," she agrees. A weapon she deploys when journalists chime in with the inevitable shagging questions. Why the fascination with her love life?
"Everyone keeps asking me about that question because there hasn't been a relationship..." she trails off.
"Just answer your uncomfortable question," insists Patric.
"No one's interested in a marriage that is doing really well or a peaceful anything. It's just part of the game. If that is what everyone thought I did, that is unfortunate because I don't have that much time on my hands."
"I see it differently," adds Patric, "you are a famous attractive woman and movies by their very essence are sexual; strangers go into a dark room and have light washed over them. Movie stars are made because people want to sleep with them, be it Gary Cooper or Grace Kelly. So in real life, people have those same fantasies and attach themselves to someone like you. Audiences want to know more than they get in two hours, to continue that connection."
"Well, there you have it, thank you!" cheers Bullock, clapping.
"Is that on tape?" laughs her co-star.
"He's so smart. But you know there is a comfort factor among human beings that I think I have. It is not Americanized, though, which sometimes lead people to assume something else. Which is okay. I'm not going to stop conducting myself in this way. I know I am not doing anything wrong. People have been doing it for hundreds of years- satirising, that is. Who cares? If it has no validity, it lasts for two days but since I'm not coming out and saying, 'No, that is not true', it has a lot of legs. It sells newspapers."

Jason Patric is a rather more problematic part of the Speed 2 equation. He bit into the fame game with Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys nearly a decade ago (about the time Bullock was heading from one smart Broadway performance into the arms of TV, with a disastrous spin-off to Working Girl.) Patric delivered a tidy performance, and his nice face and innate sexiness was not easily forgotten. This should have signalled a promising future. And yet he spurned it (read: he didn't do the projects his agent, publicist, and the media expected.) He dared to say he wanted to be a serious actor, took small theatrical assignments and the odd film such as dark thriller Rush, which everyone generously ignored.

"If someone dangles that brass ring and you don't take it, not only do they not understand it but they also start feeling bad about themselves and questioning their own lusts or greed."
Patric is quietly warming to his theme, releasing his resentment with some relish.

"So they want to stamp you as an aberration rather than coming to terms with themselves. But truth is, they need you. But they are not thinking long term. That guy is going to have his job for five years. He wants to capitalize on me if I have something to give him.
"It suprised me because I was prepared for mediocrity and all the difficulties of making movies but I didn't expect resentment that came my way for simply not working. I wasn't getting on a soapbox decrying Hollywood. I just spoke honestly and I was amazed at the resentment in Hollywood, from business people and the media because I shunned their help in raising my career. That made them feel useless."
"Which is so suprising to me," interjects Bullock in his defense, "because in this profession we are desperately looking for people with conviction, honor, fortitude- whether you agree with their stance or not. And you get those in such small doses, it frightens people because they don't understand it."
The media exacted its revenge on Patric in 1991 when they woke up one morning and discovered Keifer Sutherland's fiancee, Julia Roberts, had run off with the groom-to-be's best friend, Jason Patric (Roberts and Patric no longer speak). It was open season and the press bit as hard as they could. Patric confounded his estranged relationship with the mudrakers by regally saying nothing.

"I can go out there and try to prove them wrong but I won't stoop to that level just so I can make more money. Which is what it is really about. If I can convince people that I'm as accessible as (Adopts irrating accent for emphasis) Tom or Brad or any of those people, then I am supposed to be better- but I am not going to do that because it is wrong."
Sounds a little like Patric protests too much. It can't be all bad being Tom or Brad, can it?
"The truth is I can get away with it and be good enough. Someone down the line is not going to be as strong, not as smart or have the same oppurtunity and will be devastated because they didn't conform. So if I can be a living example without being a martyr, if that is possible, then that makes me feel a lot better."

When Patric turned up alongside De Niro, Pitt and Hoffman in the high profile Sleepers in January, he caught everyone by suprise. Suddenly journalists wanted to know what his current relationship with supermodel Christy Turlington was like and why the British-filmed Incognito had run into troubles when director Peter Weller walked after just four weeks. Sulky Patric decided to let them go figure.
"Maybe they should have closed the production then, but contractually you can't back out," opines Patric now, "but John Badham came in and made the best of it."
With a blank page on their hands, and amid the news that Jan de Bont's set was beset with problems such as sea sickness and the small business of Hurricane Lily threatening to sink the production, they invented some choice stories that Bullock hated her co-star and that he, in turn, resented her.
"Somehow," sighs Patric, "if you're a public figure and you're rich, it is somehow okay to invade your privacy or poke fun. But to celebrate someone's woes is bad, not out of feeling sympathy as an actor- because truth is we're going to be alright- but it is bad for society for that to be okay. It's bad for humanity."

Speed 2 is the bringing together of two elements at a pivotal time. This really could be their moment. Post-Sleepers, Patric should be erasing the wilderness years with a co-star who is determined to promote him ("If I could work with Jason on every film I would.....") A faintly ironic twist given that in Speed there was the sense that Reeves had generously allowed his fame to spill over onto the nascent Bullock, and now she is using the sequel to pass the favor onto her new co-star. Whether he'll make the most of the oppurtunity remains to be seen.

© 1997 by Empire Magazine

Interview from Entertainment TV (March 96)

This interview gave Sandra Entertainment Television right after the Academy
Awards ceremony, where she presented the award for Best Sound Effects Editing
(because "Speed" received this award in 1995).
Jerry Penacoli was the interviewer.
 
Jerry: And I'm Jerry Penacoli, live at Maple Drive, Elton John's big bash
  for the AIDS Foundation here in Beverly Hills and I have with me
  right now, Sandra Bullock - live - and she's just finishing up one
  little interview over here, and here she is... Thank you.Sandra: Hi.
Jerry: Sandra Bullock live.Sandra: Yes.
Jerry: You just came from the ceremony...Sandra: Yes.
Jerry: How was it? What was your favorite part?
Sandra: Um... [pause] pretty much all of it. It had a really, um... what's
  the feeling? A very relaxed feeling... of just joy. People were
  there for the art and everything went back to, sort of, human
  issues. It's a very... I don't know, there's a really great vibe
  there and I don't know if it's because of what Quincy did as a
  producer or just the films that were present this year. Everything
  sort of reflected... It seems like the industry is going back to a
  more human stance on things in a creative side and they... what I
  love is that they kept being in people who were responsible for
  putting the show together... And it was like, it was like a big...
  It was like a film crew... everyone's sort of showing who was
  responsible for bringing such a great production together and...
  it's just great. I was so nervous, but then, you know, "Stomp" went
  before me and I was getting into "Stomp" [doing some funny dancing
  moves], you know, and then I actually had to go through a door,
  then I did know I was on. But...
Jerry: Now, you look absolutely smashing. I mean, you really...
Sandra: Oh, [??? can't be understood].Jerry: What're you wearing, first of all?
Sandra: [cheerfully snooty] Well, my Cologne is... no...
Jerry: That's what I was talking about, of course!
Sandra: [more seriously] I'm wearing Calvin, Calvin Klein.
Jerry: And what about the jewelry? That choker's really...
Sandra: The jewelry is Martin Katz, it's an old... I think it's 1910. And,
  um, I'm not a big jewelry person, but this, this man seems to
  come up with these odd, beautiful, old pieces that... [laughs] cost
  more than my house.Jerry: Now, call me crazy...Sandra: Crazy.
Jerry: ... but has your hair grown tremendously?
Sandra: Yes, my hair's finally grown out! Isn't that nice?
Jerry: I mean, it's long!
Sandra: I even cut off two inches just the other week. I've been all crazy.
  Yeah, yeah, it's grown out, thank goodness. Yeah.
Jerry: So this really is one of the big hot tickets in town, isn't it?
Sandra: Is it? I don't know.Jerry: I think it is.
Sandra: It's the only one I was invited to, no. No, I don't know. I think,
  it's the one that, I think, meant the most to me because it's for -
  obviously - a wonderful cause. I'm not a big party person, but if
  you gonna go, I'd rather go to something that has a good meaning
  behind it and, you know... I feel like it's okay to be here, it's
  not a profligate thing, you feel like doing some good while
  you're... you know, having a beer and eating some pizza, so...
Jerry: I think you'll be having a little more than that, probably.
Sandra: [makes a dumb face] How do you know? Who's been talking? [looks at
  the guy who's accompanying her]
Jerry: I've seen the menu, I've seen the menu.Sandra: [laughs]
Jerry: Listen, enjoy it, Sandra.Sandra: I will, I will.
Jerry: And thanks for stopping for talking to us.
Sandra: Have yourself a good time.Jerry: Alright, thanks. See you.
Sandra: Bye. Thank you.
Jerry: Bye-bye. [to camera] Sandra Bullock, live. Back to you, guys.

© 1996 by Entertainment Television

Marie Claire (November 1999)

We sent Sandra Bullock to a psychic

Eavesdrop as she learns about the mysterious men in her future and discusses life, love and her own special female intuition with Alice Hoffman

© 1998 by Marie Claire

Playboy Magazine (September 95)

   20 Questions

   

   Sandra Bullock

   

   She got a quick start in last year's public transportation thriller,

   "Speed," and even more attention in the recent romantic comedy "While

   You Were Sleeping." But those who really know Sandra Bullock's oeuvre

   fell for her beguiling smile and personality long ago in her debut

   film, "Love Potion #9." Since then, the 29-year-old has appeared as

   the dead girlfriend in "The Vanishing," as a waitress who befriends

   Robert Duvall in "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway," as a country-singing

   wanna-be in "The Thing Called Love" and as Sylvester Stallone's

   future-cop sidekick in :Demolition Man." No doubt being the daughter

   of a German opera singer and an Alabama-bred vocal coach prepared her

   to take on diverse roles. Next, she player an agoraphobic computer

   geek in "The Net" and will star opposite Denis Leary in "Two If By

   Sea." Contributing Editor David Rensin met with Bullock at her Los

   Angeles home, a fixer-upper she's proud to have fixed up herself. "We

   talked in her breakfast nook for two hours," says Rensin. "The whole

   time I kept wondering why, with all her talent--as an actress and as a

   general contractor--wrapped up in such a fabulous and approchable

   package, this woman was single."

   

                                   1.

   

   PLAYBOY: What is unsafe at any speed?

   

   BULLOCK: Falling in love--as it should be. Yet you should go with it

   regardless of whether or not you get into a horrible accident. Even if

   your heart gets smashed, you'll be a better person once you're over

   the pain.

   

                                   2.

   

   PLAYBOY: In British slang, "bullocks" means balls. Does that describe

   you?

   

   BULLOCK: Most of the time, yes. It's either balls or it's stupidity.

   I'm like a bull in a china shop. I barrel into things because if I

   give myself too long to think about them, I'll be too scared to do

   them. I'm ballsy on first instinct. In retrospect I'm a "Why did you

   do that?" type of person. So I sit around and second-guess myself all

   the time--but I never go back and correct the situation. My first

   instinct is always right. Some people have buyers remorse; I have

   action remorse, dress remorse, comment remorse. I always go, "That was

   stupid. Why did I say that?" On the other hand, I say what I think. I

   should be glad.

   

                                   3.

   

   PLAYBOY: Are you a gals' gal or are you a guys' gal?

   

   BULLOCK: I can be either, depending on the company I keep. Mostly I'm

   a nice balance of both. These days there's not so much of a difference

   as there was 20 years ago, when one type of woman hung with guys at

   the truck stop and the other was a homemaker. I love that I have a lot

   of male friends and I can talk to them about what guys like from

   girls. And my girlfriends are really strong, feminine women--yet we

   can be girls together. Some days we just have to go out and shop, get

   a massage, get loofahed and pampered. The next day we want to conquer

   the world and start our own company.

   

                                   4.

   

   PLAYBOY: Explain loofah to the unwashed.

   

   BULLOCK: It's an exfoliant. It looks like a sponge made from shredded

   wheat. I got loofahed yesterday. You go to this place in Chinatown and

   they put you in a hot alkaline bath. Then a lovely Asian woman come

   in, throws you onto a table--you're naked--takes a loofah glove and

   rubs it all over your body. It completely tears off the first three

   layers of skin so that you feel like you were just born. Then they

   give you a shiatsu, dip you and flip you around, toss you about the

   room. You walk out feeling like you've just taken off a week's  ugly

   layer. You're all shiny and pink and you can go off into the next

   millennium.

   

                                   5.

   

   PLAYBOY: While we're close to the skin, tell us what men should know

   about women's underwear. How soon is too soon to buy some for you?

   

   BULLOCK: No one has ever bought me underwear, and I'm a little bummed

   about that. Maybe it's not such a big deal anymore to buy a woman

   underwear. Women have Victoria's Secret. We're in there everyday,

   buying the greatest stuff, so men probably think, I can't buy her that

   sexy piece because she probably already has it. I've bought myself the

   gamut. I like a certain type of . . . how can I say it delicately? It

   doesn't produce pantie lines. I like camisoles. I love men's Calvin

   Kleins. Women think pulling on a pair of men's underwear is very sexy.

   

           Buying me underwear by the second week of dating is a little forward.

   Maybe after the three month getting-to-know-you period is over, when

   you know if you want to continue the relationship. Then, I would

   prefer him to buy what he wanted to see me in. I want to be surprised,

   like, "Try this on." As long as there are no sharp things sticking out

   of it.

   

                                   6.

   

   PLAYBOY: Finish this sentence: I must have_____.

   

   BULLOCK: Chocolate. Dark, milk, it doesn't matter. Depends on the

   mood. If I feel sophisticated and European, I go for semisweet. If I

   feel childlike and playful, I go for milk chocolate. Every once in a

   while I'll try chocolate with a filling of some sort. My mother is

   from Germany and I was raised there, so she sends me there elaborate

   chocolate bars that have liquor inside. But I like basic chocolate.

   Over the counter, it's Hershey's.

   

                                   7.

   

   PLAYBOY: For Germans, sausage is an all-purpose word. For example,

   when they say, "Heidi is wurstlike," it means she's playful. Can you

   give us any other common German phrases that employ the word sausage,

   or should we ask Claudia Schiffer?

   

   BULLOCK: One of my favorites is "Es ist mir Wurst," which means "I

   don't care." We translate it literally in our family, "It's my

   sausage." [Pauses] Please don't lump me together with Claudia

   Schiffer, though. It's like a complement and not. In a room with

   Claudia Schiffer, who do you think is going to be asked the sausage

   question?

   

                                   8.

   

   PLAYBOY: You once poked fun at our Playmate Data Sheet. So what are

   your turn-ons and turnoffs?

   

   BULLOCK: My turn-ons are electricity, sharp wit, a sense of humor on

   occasion, and nice forearms and hands on a guy. I also love great

   dancers and unabashed directness about what you want, behind closed

   doors or not. I don;t like hemming and hawing. That just gives me time

   to think about walking away.

   My turnoffs are also electricity, and somebody who doesn't know what a

   wrench or screwdriver is. I'm also turned off by people who talk down

   to me. I can put up with a lot of garbage-type people. But when

   someone talks to me like I'm a four-year-old, that lights the fuse and

   makes me want to lash out.

   

                                   9.

   

   PLAYBOY: We hear your fond of blackjack. Do you stand or take a hit on

   17?

   

   BULLOCK: When I was in Reno it became my game of choice. It was the

   only thing that gave me some sense of control. I had read a little

   book on how to play blackjack-not that I remembered anything. I

   figured that if I could maintain my $35, which I did in an

   hour--win-lose, win-lose--I was doing well. My one rule is not to look

   at the ball overhead and wave. In fact they ask you not to. The guy

   who's watching doesn't want to say hi. I always take a hit on 17.

   Always. You're not supposed to, but it's that fine line. I just figure

   the gods like me enough to give me whatever I need. It usually never

   happens.

   

                                   10.

   

   PLAYBOY: In While You Were Sleeping you fall in love with a guy who

   goes into a comma. How much fun can you have with a inanimate man?

   

   BULLOCK: Well, they don't talk back. But that would be no fun at all.

   I don't like guys who will lie down and take it. I want someone who'll

   fight back. I like people who can argue well, So many people are not

   willing to back down for the sake of not getting into something. I may

   not be a screamer and a thrower, but my ideal mate is not the dead guy

   in Weekend at Bernie's.

   

                                   11.

   

   PLAYBOY: What do you think goes on in your house while you're

   sleeping?

   

   BULLOCK: The dogs make long-distance phone calls, and I have the bills

   to prove it. All my dogs are on cahoots. Weegee has called Brooklyn,

   Jersey, Queens. The girls have called France. They're very European.

   Unfortunately, Weegee's missing and there have been no calls to

   Jersey, Brooklyn or Queens since he's been gone. I wish he were still

   making those calls. I want my dog back.

   

                                   12.

   

   PLAYBOY: There are some actors you want to watch act, and there are

   some you just want to sleep with--however compelling they may be as

   actors. Is this a problem for you?

   

   BULLOCK: Great acting may be a turn-on, but it won't make me fantasize

   about the person for a week. What always gets me is when I see

   somebody on-screen who looks like he's a great kisser. There's a

   certain way that I like a guy to go for a woman in a kissing

   situation. When my girlfriends and I see that the guy isn't afraid, we

   all have the same reaction: We squeal, we grip the seats, we whisper

   to one another. We get stupid. There's something compelling about

   someone who's comfortable with his sensuality, which is all in how he

   goes for the woman and looks at her. That's what's good about the film

   business--you can fantasize. You have that stupid crush feeling. It's

   really nice.

   

                                   13.

   

   PLAYBOY: Describe the ingredients in a love potion that would work on

   you.

   

   BULLOCK: THe ability to make me laugh a lot. Just be very interested

   in me. Sometimes I'm all over the place. But I'm incredible loyal, and

   I don't like it when somebody puts me in a box. Don't say, "Oh, she's

   great, but if I can just calm her down a bit. . . . " I once met a old

   cowboy. His wife was a free spirit and he was very steady. They'd been

   married for 40 years. I asked him how it worked. He said, "Well, my

   dad always told me,  `You have a wild pony, don't put up a fence. Just

   leave a light on at home. If she's happy, she'll always come home.'"

   Same with me: Don't corral me and I'll always come home. Always. Just

   let me go out and play during the day. When I'm exhausted, I'll come

   back.

   

                                   14.

   

   PLAYBOY: What one thing do you know you're really good at?

   

   BULLOCK: Dancing. I love going to salsa clubs. On Wrestling Ernest

   Hemingway, Robert Duvall taught me how to tango. I've also salsaed,

   rumbaed and merengued with him. We would tango during breaks in

   shooting, get only to beat 12 and then have to go back on the set.

   He's a beautiful dancer. That's where I got the bug. NOw every chance

   I get I go out and salsa. The tango is so sensual. You have to be

   really comfortable with yourself--and in sync with your partner.

   There's this 70-year-old guy I know at one of the salsa clubs--he

   seems like a Spanish king. We dance and it clicks. It's seductive.

   It's not a sexual thing, it's sensual. And it takes getting used to.

   When I first tangoed, I though, Oh my God, I'm pressing his body! But

   now it's the only time I will completely relinquish control, because I

   have to--and I like it. The woman is totally reactive. The man has the

   moves. He's guiding with just the fingers and the touch of his right

   palm, to let you know if you're going into a spin, or if you're going

   to break. It's amazing.

   

                                   15.

   

   PLAYBOY: What can you repair around the house without having to use

   the Yellow Pages?

   

   BULLOCK: I can install toilets. I know all about the wax ring. I can

   screw in a lightbulb. I can tile floors. I'm learning how to do basic

   wiring. I'm not afraid of electricity so much as I used to be. I just

   want to do it to say I can. But if a handyman should come to my house

   who knows how to do it, believe me, I would much rather sit out on a

   lawn chair and hand him the screwdriver.

   

                                   16.

   

   PLAYBOY: Why do women leave their diaries lying around for their

   boyfriends to stumble on?

   

   BULLOCK: I never leave my diary out for anybody to stumble on. Ever.

   It's in a place where nobody will find it. I don't even write down

   what I really think because I', so afraid of what somebody might find.

   Half my diary is in code, just in case I die and somebody finds it.

   They'll have no idea what I'm talking about. But I need to get these

   things out because I don't talk to people a lot. This is my way of

   venting--once I write it down I feel so much better. One time somebody

   did some serious snooping. They must have been looking for a long

   time, because the found my hiding place. That was the end of

   everything.

   

                                   17.

   

   PLAYBOY: You're kidnapped by aliens, and you have 20 minutes to pack.

   What three things do you take? And what do you bring back when the

   release you?

   

   BULLOCK: A toothbrush. A change of underwear. My throwaway camera,

   with flash. I want to bring back a group photo in the throwaway camera

   and that long prod everyone seems to talk about.

   

                                   18.

   

   PLAYBOY: You've called Jerry Lewis an inspiration, if not a hero.

   Imagine for us the movie that you and he would make together, and your

   part in it.

   

   BULLOCK: I want to be Jerry Lewis' sister, with the buck teeth and

   glasses, saying, "Lady!" When I saw Dumb and Dumber. I thought, They

   need a sister! I want to be the sister. I want to be in Dumb and

   Dumber and Really Stupid. And in there somewhere, Jerry would just be

   Jerry.

   

                                   19.

   

   PLAYBOY: When do you think phone sex was invented, and how do you

   think the first couple felt afterward?

   

   BULLOCK: Was Alexander Graham Bell married? "Watson, come here; I want

   you." [Laughs] Phone sex was a natural transition. It had to happen.

   You have a phone. Boy and girl on the line. There's a safety in the

   facelessness of it, so I think it happened almost

   immediately--probably between Bell and Watson. But that's something

   the history books will never tell us.

   

   

                                   20.

   

   PLAYBOY: What are the best perks of the acting life? With which over

   indulgences have you lost patience?

   

   BULLOCK: The best perk is going to incredible places--and you don't

   have to pay for it. Over indulgences occur when assistant directors

   feel they have to wait on me hand and foot. That makes me feel so

   neurotic. I can get my own water, bagel, cream cheese, whatever. I may

   be an actor, but I can go to the bathroom by myself. On the other

   hand, having a masseuse on the set is not a bad thing. When I made

   Demolition Man I remember standing at the craft service table one day,

   making an offhand remark that I love Fluff, which is this marshmallow

   stuff. Apparently it's sold only in certain parts of the country. Two

   days later there was a case of it in my trailer. Joel Silver, the

   producer had overheard and had somebody send me a case. That's

   extravagant, but not over the top.

Copyright © September 1995 Playboy Enterprises, Inc.

Télémoustique (September 96)

Sandra Bullock Slows Down.

Interview first published in " Telemoustique " of the 12th September 1996, n°3685.
Interview : Pascal Stevens.

It Took just one film, "Speed", for Sandra Bullock to speed through the Hollywood Galaxy. Another two - "The Net" and "While You Were Sleeping" - to get crowned. And an unsuccessful one, "Two If By Sea (Stolen hearts)" to slow down. She'll be soon on the list with "A Time To Kill". A film painfully of the moment since it is based on the rape of a child. A crime which affects her deeply and against which she tries, in her own way, to fight.

Her forthcoming movie is A Time to Kill , a courtroom film where, strangely, she appears only briefly and in a supporting role. She plays a low student who tries to help a bright young lawyer (the excellent Matthew McConaughey). He is defending a man whose young daughter was raped and who does justice himself. The trial takes place in a stormy mood : if the rapists were white, the accused is a black man. And in this city of the Southern States, there is still an atmosphere of primary racism. In this context, the search for real justice is almost impossible.

Generally sparkling, over-excited and natural, Sandra Bullock is here concerned, caring and dramatic. A change of attitude, and a certain risk, for someone who, during some period, was considered as the most charming "beautiful-girl" of an America always in search of new Hollywood fairies. A Hollywood conquered by her smile and her vivacity, enough to earn her a princely salary (Bullock is the best paid actress after Demi Moore and Julia Roberts): six million Dollars for five week's work in A Time To Kill. John Grisham was paid the same amount for the copyright of the book on which the film is based.

Even if she intends to slow down, she nevertheless keeps releasing movies steadily. She has finished filming of In Love and War, by Richard Attenborough, and recorded the voice of Moise's sister in Prince of Egypt, a long cartoon by Spielberg inspired by the Biblic captivity of the Hebrews. She is also preparing to shoot in Kate and Leopold, a romantic comedy, before starting with Speed 2,this time though without Keanu Reeves (" He chose to do things differently, avoiding having to refuse enormous sums. Why not, I find this attitude very honourable"). Finally, beginning '97, Lost Paradise, will be released, a small film of 1991, unreleased up till now, with, in the background, the destruction of the Amazonian jungle.

·         At this stage of your career, you can allow yourself to pick the movies which put you exclusively in the limelight. However, in A Time To Kill, it is almost the opposite!It's true, and for a very simple reason : it was really time that I shrank back, changed style and thus, rediscovered the taste of risk. When a whole movie weighs on your shoulders, you've no time to think at something else than your performance. When you have a small part, however, it allows you to integrate yourself in the filming process. You have the time to watch its evolution, talk to the techniciens, etc.

• Were you tired of being on the front line ?It is undeniable that I was there in no time ! And I admit that not long ago, I ran behind movies that gave me, before anything, the chief role. Presently, I'm more attracted by the story of a film, its message and its human context : the director, the location, the other actors ... . More over, when I learnt that Joel Schumacher and Samuel L. Jackson took part in A Time To Kill, I didn't hesitate a second : it was directly , yes.
• Even more so when Schumacher is a director famous for his choice of actors.Exactly. And it's important to know that we'll have good partners and thus feel confidence even before stepping on the stage. Sometimes, we watch a movie and we think : "Isn't this actor a bad one ? Doesn't he play bad ?" Most of the time it is because he has a director weaker than himself, who hesitates to push him to the last limits. I don't want this to happen to me. I don't want to be treated delicately because of my fame. At the end, my game would suffer and I would be the first to be punished. Thus, I wanted someone with character, which is the case with Joel.
• Behind your "Young Woman" side, we have the impression that you are a strong head.I don't know. It's a fact that I know what I want and I don't hesitate to throw myself in the fight when I believe in something. I did so when I started in New York, where it is not the easiest place to start a career, and where I often hit "empty". But it's true that insecurity motivates me and fear stimulates me. The fear to wanting to give my best hoping that this will appears on the screen.
• In A Time To kill , a father kills the rapist of his daughter. Does this kind of violence seem to you appropriate ?Of course! For this film I did some research myself and find some examples like this up to 1906. That he kills him justifies of course the story, but this is not the only message. There is also the understanding between races. For racial tensions still exists, less than before, but it still reigns in the more isolated regions, in these small towns -and not only of the South- which we can hardly locate on a map. Less than twenty years ago, we could never have filmed where we did, in Canton, in the South of the USA. Joel would have only got in trouble. Big Trouble!
• Were you yourself afraid during the filming ?Not really. And then what happened during this filming was extraordinary. To find the hundreds of necessary extra's, Joel had to search in the local population. Thanks to that, he succeeded into talking between people, Blacks and Whites, who had never talked for ages! Something unique happened, something big in the history of the cinema, but also in that of racial conflict. During the scenes of hate, including the Ku Klux Klan, you should have seen those extra's swear, threat to hit and then, after the "Cut", remove their masks, lower the fists and kiss each other, sit for games of cards, give news of the town. It was magnificent. This film, believe me, lifted us. It made us grow. Which shows that, sometimes, Hollywood is good! (Big laugh)
• Up to July, tens of black churches were set on fire in the Southern States.I know, even though it's another subject, it's a bit sad the film was released at this time. For my part, I always found stupid to burn unanimate objects like a church where people express a will for happiness. To burn them only magnifies those places of joy and the need for good of their faithful.
• To the element of racial conflict, the film also adds that of personal vengeance and children abuse. A problem which affects you especially, I think.Absolutely. With my mother, I work for organizations for protecting children, especially to make them more efficient. In the USA, we've stopped counting single mothers without a roof for their children. We've stopped counting the cases of sexual harassment and child murders. Unfortunately, we are not yet powerful enough to stop them, like we saw with the two girls, in your country, Belgium. (At the time of the interview, only the bodies of Julie and Melissa had been found)
• In this sense, the rape scene of the film is particularly trying.And in reality, it's even more terrifying. My sister, Gesine, just got her degree in law and her boyfriend is a D.A. (District Attorney). You can't imagine the pictures and the reports he brings home. Frightening!
• Aren't you afraid to see your sister get mixed in this system ? In the film, the house of the lawyer is set on fire.Not to this point, but enough in any case to have made my sister work for me! I was pressing her during four months. And it's true, because of selfishness and not wanting something to happen to her, I prefer to have her close to me. She is my lawyer from now on which is not to say that one day she won't detest this world of sharks that is showbiz, and will want to leave. Only then, it's me who will have the key to this door! (she chuckles)
• At the same time, your father became your manager!Yes, but for other reasons. With success and the constant attention I got, I ended up being lost in all this. My father decided then to help me. He gave up his passion, singing, to raise me a second time, in a way! He helped me make the right decisions. But after all isn't it natural ? In a family, one helps one another, don't they ?
• Has success changed you ?Honestly, I don't think so. I don't have the impression of having changed my way of life. I have the same habits as before, the same "raging hungers", the same interests (dancing especially), I'm just more solicited. But no, I don't think success has transformed or degraded me.
• Just after Speed, you said that you would be "for sale" another three years. The "expiry" is arriving rapidly...I surely meant five years (big laugh). But as I told you just now, I really mean to make myself marginal. And produce films where I don't appear. I've made enough money to allow this to myself, my old age is assured.
• To hear you, we should expect you only in small films in the future!The next one, in any case, is small. In Love and War is a veracious love story, happenning during World War I. It will be released in February, I think. We're far from a "Blockbuster" like Speed and closer to a Stolen Hearts.
• A film that didn't really work out..I'll tell you : so the better! Really. I did it for a friend and if I was disappointed at the end, I'm happy for this failure. Many people said : "This is it, she 's made her first wrong movie !" Well, I say : "Thanks". I was almost relieved : my name was finally not a trick for success, blind and automatic! What's more, it's thanks to it that I started directing a short production, Making Sandwiches, so as to understand the traps of filming and be able, later, to avoid them.
• For this short production, you "engaged" Matthew McConaughey, your partner in A Time To Kill. Pictures where we saw you really close were published...Those where we are hugging on a beach. But it was for the filming! It was filmed six months ago. They were two weeks of pure pleasure! Matthew is really extraordinary, full of charm and a rising future big actor! He has no ego and his feet are on the ground. However he's now trapped in a great adventure, just like myself after Speed. But he managed to keep calm. This also was good to see during filming : while we were all afraid he'd disconnect, crushed by the responsability of his role, we saw him evolve directly, shooting after shooting, scene after scene. We all knew it would be difficult for him. But he accepted it. The storm that's carrying him right now is thus a nice reward, even though he needs to get hold in order to keep his head clear. And believe me, I know what I'm talking about!

© 1996 by Télémoustique

US Magazine (February 97)

Here is a recent dream from the mind of Miss Bullock: She is in a Range Rover. In the front are 2 friends. In the back, she is sitting with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. The car pulls up at this really trendy restaurant. Sandra doesn't want to be there- she doesn't like the kind of restaurant where everyone looks at one another- but her friends say it is going to be great. Inside it's huge and everyone is dressed in leather vests and gold chains and jeans. Really Melrose, she thinks. For some reason, Warren, Annette, and one of Bullock's friends stay in the car. The other friend goes to the restaurant's bathroom. Bullock sits there and sits there and sits there. Sweating. Freaking out. Two hours later she goes into the bathroom to find her friend, but the friend is gone. They've all left her there.

"What do you think that means?" Bullock asks. "The Range Rover, the very famous talented couple, the trendy restaurant, fear, sweating, alone, bathroom? Help me."
Did you order any food?
No. I was really angry and I left the restaurant. I went in the parking lot and they weren't there. Therapy, yes?
Well, the most obvious, pat explanation would be that you're worried that Hollywood will pick you up and then abandon you, will leave you lonely at it's silly restaurant.
(Overly melodramatic voice) Oh, my God, you're right! In a Range Rover!
Hollywood picks you up in it's car, then leaves you sad, old and unhappy.
That's it! You're so right.
Actually, I don't think it means that at all. It's too obvious.
No, but I tend to go for the obvious.

This month Sandra Bullock appears opposite Chris O'Donnell as Ernest Hemingway's First World War nurse and lover in Lord Richard Attenborough's In Love and War. In an era when any actress who makes her mark in light comedy or fun action roles tends to feel trapped, this part is exactly the sort of scary challenge for which she hankers.

"The film," says Bullock, "was one big bucket of fear." She wanted to discover how to communicate in a different way. She needed to eliminate her cozy, sinuous, '90's body language: "A friend of mine always says that she went to Europe and she learned how to sit still," she says. Bullock had to learn "what it is to communicate in silences and let the inner life take over rather than relying on everything outward. Because that's what I relied on all my life, sort of as a comfort mechanism. I wanted to remove all the things that were comfortable for me." Bullock asked the director to intervene if he ever caught her taking the easy way out and relying on her old habits. And he did. "I've never heard a man who speaks so eloquently call me an idiot more often," she recalls.

To give her performance the appropriate Method sparkle, Bullock, 31, also needed to learn first aid the World War One way. She was given a 1918 Red Cross nurse's handbook. Things were different then.

"Not only do they have to know how to bandage a severed leg," she relates, "but they also show you how to make egg creams and waffles. There's a little cookbook section in there. I was like, 'Next to the severed hand is the egg-cream recipe?' "
So that Bullock would appreciate the exact function of any instrument she picked up, she attended the obligatory series of operations. "I watched people's intestines being taken out," she says. "We were holding people's bowels." One day she found in her hands the just-removed cancerous uterus of a young woman. "It bothered me," she says evenly,"because it didn't bother me."

So if my stomach spills open later on, you'll be able to handle it?

No. I'll be able to tell you which organ was what, and I could probably stop the bleeding for a little while.

And you could whip me up a tasty waffle?

Yeah. A nice egg cream while you wait for the ambulance.
For unintentional added authenticity, Bullock claims to have never really gotten over her jet lag throughout In Love and War's European shoot. "My face resembles the war part," she says. "The love part is the beauty of Chris." She gushes with praise for her co-star but is delighted that US magazine has exposed his retrogressive attitude toward armpit hair. She had already taken her own personal steps to shake him out of it: "Out of spite; me and my girlfriend Pamela, who does make-up, grew armpit hair just to get a rise out of him."

Sandra Bullock's rented house on the island of St. Martin is on a hill overlooking the Caribbean. She is here to film Speed 2. This time it's on water, and most of the filming is done 4 miles out to sea, on or near a cruise ship called the Seabourn Legend.
We first sit at the dining table, then next door in the living room. (Bullock is not here at the house much- she tends to sleep on the boat- so she figures she should use as many of the rooms as possible.)
On either side of an archway between the rooms, 2 medical rubber gloves are hung- they're from a friend's care package, Bullock offers by way of explanation. "I didn't want to throw them away," she says,"in case somebody could do something fun with them." (Like? "Well, you can blow them up and make thanksgiving turkeys out of them," she says. I look doubtful. "You've got to be around children a lot," she explains.)
She shows me the pool and says she can skinny-dip in it only at night. She's worried that someone will get her with a camera. (The film bosses are doing their best to accomadate her. They have warned the 5 known paparazzi on the island and have had the airspace over Bullock's house restricted.) Still, some of those who would like to imagine Bullock naked are already finding some strange satisfaction.
Her father found some nude photos of her recently on the Internet. The only thing is, they're fakes. "They've placed my head on this incredibly great set of breasts," she says. "Which to me is not offensive because I look great." When her father discovered his fraudulently unclothed daughter, he printed out the photo and left it in her office with a message: "Do you want to send the guy a thank-you note?"

After the sun sets completely, Bullock fetches me a Mexican beer, carefully cutting a lime. She grabs herself a Bud Light. Ker-chink. "Here's to half a brain but a lot of personality," she toasts. Soon she will boast of feeling quite tipsy. "I'm a big lightweight," she says."My friends will tell you, I'm a 2-beer max." So I ask some questions:

Are you getting itchy to have children?

I've always been itchy for it, and I've always known from a very young age that I belong around a bunch of kids. I love kids so much. There was a time when I could say, "Oh, I can have a child without a husband." That's given way to that I would like to believe in the premise of trying to start out a partnership, and all the good that we can bring, then pass it on to the child. The dilemma is: Am I being fair, bringing a child into this world? Do I feel that what I have to teach them is going to help them survive and change the world for the better? I could have had kids at 17. Except for the fact that I wasn't doing anything to have the children.

Are you more likely to split up with someone than let them split up with you?

I don't know. I think now I'm incredibly more in tune with what I want and not afraid to voice it. I have always worried about other people and stayed in things long past their time, making sure they were OK, even though it meant taking away your soul for another 2 years.

How would the new you typically announce you wanted to go out with someone?

Oh, my God. I'm the worst person for that, because if their is somebody I like, they are the last person in the world to know it. I can't talk to them, I cannot look at them, I cannot flirt with them. Flirting to me is shutting down and becoming very comatose. I think I would need someone to say they want to go out with me.
Well, so much for the new assertiveness.
I know. It's like I'm a walking contradiction.

What should a man never do on a date with you?

(Laughs) It's been a long time. I don't like it when people curb their spontaneity. I'm one of those people you can pretty much say and do anything around. And I like people who are very direct. No beating around the bush. And talk about what you do, but don't talk about what you have as a result of what you do.

Do you remember the first time you kissed a boy?

Yes, I do. He became my boyfriend. The most beautiful boy in the whole wide world. Blond hair. Bowl cut. Slender. He asked me to go steady with him. For Christmas, we met in the stairwell at my elementary school, and he gave me a box of chocolates and I gave him a hat. Then a friend had a party where our parents dropped us off. We sat on the couch, and I think I kissed him for about an hour; your lips are numb but you don't stop. He was the first boyfriend, the great love. I drove past his old house recently. He committed suicide. It could have been a mistake, but it was one of those car-in-the-garage. It was very sad. He was beautiful.

Did he break your heart, or did you break his?

Big time, he broke my heart. He left me for a girl who had big breasts, in the 6th grade (laughs).

Can you remember what you thought about sex before you did it?

Oh, yeah. My parents had a book, The Joy of Sex. Me and my girlfriend Lydia found it. They're going to love me for saying this; they had no idea we found it. I'm sure everyone thought I was going to be a wild child, but I was also aware of my boundaries. If anything, I was a late bloomer. I was already in college. I think back on it fondly (soft laugh), so it was all right.

The young Sandra's earliest talent, sadly long lost, was for projectile vomiting. "I wish I could explain it," she says. "You cannot keep anything down. But the distance you achieve is apparently wonderful." Her earliest ambition was to kill her younger sister, Gesine. "At 5, I was obsessed with this new child, and I wanted her dead. They said I was a horrible, horrible older sister."

The Bullock children grew up in both America and Germany. Her mother, an opera singer, spent the performing season in Europe, and Bullock would get bit parts as "the token gypsy child." Her father, a civilian who worked at the Pentagon, would visit, but he would also leave. "That's why I don't cry at airports anymore," Bullock says, "because I remember, as a kid, my dad's leaving was the most devastating day."

When Bullock was about 5, her mother bought a book about how to turn your child into a genius. What did it teach Bullock? "I forget," she says. A self-deprecating chortle. "Obviously not much."

Her mother determined that Bullock was on drugs when she was 12. She would usually hide her diaries and notes- about the people she was madly in love with and the people who weren't madly in love with her and about how she so wanted to die because of it all- in the carved canopy bed her father had made, based on one she'd seen and loved in the film Cleopatra. Because Bullock was going through a particularly uncommunicative, brooding phase, Mom suspected something untoward was going on and began to search for evidence. She found a note in the back pocket of her daughter's pants. Something about a boy and then- God help us! Were we really such bad parents to deserve this?- the mysterious letters WBS. Quite obviously, Mrs. Bullock concluded, it was code for drugs.

The crisis abated only when Bullock offered up a less fanciful (and, in fact, truthful) interpretation of the 3 scary letters. Teenagers have other needs for codes and other things to hide: Write back soon.
After that, things were OK again.

"What it really meant," Bullock now japes, "is 'Will bring stash.' "

Bullock was sitting by a hospital bed for 2 days, waiting for someone to wake up ("I don't think they would want me to talk about it," she demurs), when she wrote the script for Making Sandwiches, a 40-minute short film that she directed and performed in last year. "It could be a piece of garbage," she says. "I have no idea. But it just meant something to me."
The story focuses on a couple (Bullock plays the wife) who live in a small town and work in a sandwich shop. Their lives are straight forward, ritualistic and safe. Then their livelihood is threatened by circumstances they don't understand. The wife feels that if they lose the business, it will break her husband, so she introduces fancier foodstuffs to the menu. The husband takes this as a sign that she is changing and that she doesn't love, or appreciate, her old life. The crunch comes when she recklessly introduces pocket pita bread. "To him, metaphorically, their sandwich shop represented their relationship: 2 slices of bread," Bullock says. "Pocket pita was just one slice. He thought that what they had wasn't good enough and she didn't care for him anymore."
There's something very true to the core of Bullock about a story like this. Sandwiches are a very Sandra Bullock metaphor. "It was sort of my philosophy on relationships," she says.

Her husband in Making Sandwiches is played by Matthew McConaughey, Bullock's A Time To Kill co-star, the man whom she met through the parents of her godchild a few years back, the new star of the moment whom the world's gossipmongers have paired off with the actress. Let's ask.

Acording to the world's tabloids-

The tabloids have had me with seveeral wonderful men. I'm telling you, I've had a very extensive dating life. I was apparently paired up with Keanu (Reeves) when I went to see his band. I walked in, and so I guess we're dating.

Then there was the Chris O'Donnell "canoodling" thing.

Who knew what canoodling was? I thought we were dancing. I thought we were having a hug and there were 20 other people around , and the next thing we know, it's a canoodle. I was also paired with Troy Aikman, the football player, and I didn't even know who he was. We met at a function, and there we were, the happy couple.

And in the tabloid world it is now accepted as fact that you are dating Matthew McConaughey.

I know. It's wonderful, isn't it?

Any semblance of truth?

Matthew's one of my closest friends. I adore Matthew. And on my priority list of friends, he's up there with the top three. I don't mind being paired with Matthew because I've finally gotten used to it. I'm at the point where I'm like, if you can't beat it, join it. Matthew and I were apparently married when I was in England.

Congratulations.

(In a silly, girly voice) Thank you very much. If there's gonna be anybody to pair me up with, I don't mind being paired with Matthew because his values and morality and his friendship mean the world to me. We're cut from the same cloth.

So what can we say about your relationship?

You can tell everyone that Matthew and I are very close friends. You can say that. (Giggles)

I read in the British press that you were supposed to have piled on the pounds because of Matthew's fine cooking.

(Bemused) To my knowledge, Matthew doesn't do more than throw a bunch of steaks on the grill. (Pause) Not true; there was a chicken once. I don't think I've ever seen him sit down and cook a full meal. But I love that. That's so great. (As if addressing McConaughey) Matthew, you're touted as the new chef! Not only are you a hot new young actor, but you're a chef!

If there is one thing that Bullock wants me to understand, it is that she has changed. She has made a discovery common enough among those who achieve the success they once dreamed of: that you don't luxuriate in the simple pleasure of such achievement for long. When you are struggling, the question is a simple one: How can I make it? The questions success asks are trickier. "I came to a point where I'd stopped and said, 'That's it,' " Bullock says. "I had finished doing what came easy to me. I had pushed it as far as I could, and I realized I was evolving into a corner. I just felt that I had been emptied. I didn't have anything else to discuss or share or contribute or anything. I just felt like I was finished with a certain era of my life."

Thus, Bullock's first post-success failure, last year's Two If By Sea, was, although a dissapointment, something of a relief in the way it burst her bubble of cheery invincibility. "It took the pressure off," she reflects. "You think to yourself: People are being too kind, and I'm just afraid of this kindness, because I will let someone down. And I wanted to do it as quickly as possible, so I could be on a level where I wasn't panicked all the time for messing up. The film didn't do well, and all of a sudden you feel, nobody cares. The oddest feeling just lifted. It felt so good."

In March 1996, she parted company with her manager and her lawyer. Much of the weight of managing her career has subsequently been assumed by her family. (This is generally the point in a career when people gently edge their family out of their business life, not usher them in.) Bullock's father, who was working in Washington, D.C., as a vocal teacher, started helping her out about 2 years ago. The impression she gives is that, in trying to control her business life, she had been overwhelmed by the responsibilities but was unwilling to delegate them to outsiders. Eventually, her father gave up his teaching. "A lot of his students," she says, "really hate me right now." Her sister, a law student, also helps out (and, in fact, worked out many of the practical arrangements for this story).

Another example, Bullock says, of something that has changed in the last 2 years: "If I want to take off and travel, go to New Orleans and go dancing for the whole weekend, I do it. I get on a plane. I used to make excuses about why I shouldn't enjoy myself, because I felt it went against the work. And it showed. I think it showed in a stiffness and a falseness."

Bullock tells me about how she felt grown-up for the first time only last week. She talks about the mountain having moved. "I feel like I've blossomed," she says. "Flowered."

Of course, she is aware of the irony that amid all this talk of the new, more rarified Sandra Bullock, she is filming Speed 2. "The last 2 films were very heady and internal," she says, "and I wanted to do something that was fun and physical to balance things out." Nonetheless, she says, "this is the last time I'll do something like this."
Ever?
"Ever," she replies. "Probably."

Looking for clues, I phone a couple of witnesses. Director Peter Bogdanovich cast an unknown Bullock, against the film studio's wishes, in 1993's The Thing Called Love. She played a ditsy Southern songwriter wannabe- her character's marvelously bad featured song, "Heaven Knocked on My Door," was written by Bullock herself- who eventually decides that she wants to go to New York to be an actress. (Her final, prophetic catch phrase: "Comedy is a part of serious acting, Billy!")

"A real natural, a natural-born comedian," says Bogdanovich of Bullock. The secret of her appeal is, he claims, frightfully simple: "She has this likable quality. It's impossible to make Sandy look phony. It's like that thing Hemingway used to say about writers: She has a built-in crap detector. She's intrinsically believable." And she's funny off camera too. "She makes you laugh, even when you're not in the mood. She used to walk on the set and slap me on the butt- 'How ya doing, Pete?' " And? "I liked it, actually. I thought, do that again."

Denis Leary first met Bullock on the set of Demoliton Man, 1993's passable Sylvester Stallone-Wesley Snipes futuristic romp, and their friendship survived the trauma of Two If By Sea. (Her story is that Leary discovered the phone in her trailer and ran up a huge bill.) "She is what she is; it's not fake," Leary says. "She's very trusting and open, and I think that's what people respond to. The great thing now is that she hasn't actually lost that." I ask Leary what he thinks Bullock wants from all this.
"Money," he replies. "She's in it for the money. Just pure, unadulterated greed. I hate to break that news to America, but I think she's stockpiling the money with the idea of buying some nuclear weapons eventually and an island someplace." Quite. Any last thoughts? "You've probably got a copy of the prison record; it's common knowledge. And beyond the secret marriage to Jan-Michael Vincent in the '70's, I don't think there's anything else you need to know."

A slow tender shuttles between the Seabourn and shore all day. I go out to sea at the crack of dawn. Bullock appears from her cabin around 9 a.m., bouncing down the corridor, carrying her laptop. This morning's chosen subject: the unflappably cheery Sandra Bullock's purported but elusive dark side. "Oh," she claims, "it's pretty morbid. I think you find- (with) anybody that's so outwardly obnoxious and clownlike- they're bound to have dark recesses that they're hiding and balancing out. Don't you think?" She doesn't seem entirely sure. "I can't be fun and games all the time. Or maybe I am and I'm just trying to find something."

Michael, Bullock's bodyguard, passes by.
"Michael!" Bullock shouts. "Do I have a dark side?"
"Yes," he answers immediately.
"Wow," says Lara, Bullock's assistant. "No hesitation on that."
"The tape recorder's on," Bullock tells Michael.
He pauses. "No," he says. "Actually, no dark side at all."

The cruise ship is surrounded by a perpetual flotilla of 5 or 6 other boats used for filming and for ferrying to and from shore. Bullock decides to commandeer one of the speedboats for more flippant purposes. "Blast around the ship really fast," she instructs the pilot. "Just make it exciting." And it is: flying over waves fast enough to fill our faces with spray, fast enough that we have to hold on tight as the boat jumps right out of the water, fast enough for someone to radio from the cruise ship and tell us to behave.
An hour later, Bullock borrows another boat and persuades the pilot to let her take the controls. "OK," she says, "throttle, baby." This is faster and rougher. When she bounces clear of 3 or 4 waves in a row, I lose my balance, ending up in a heap around her ankles. Back on the ship, she will boast that she nearly killed me.

Filming takes months. You get bored. One morning, as the tender approached the Seabourn, all 30 passengers- ages 14 to 70- turned around, lowered their pants and mooned the master ship. Bullock was one of them. Perhaps she was even the ringleader. On board the main ship, one of the cameramen filmed the action. Before Bullock saw the footage, she imagined that you could see nothing more than the cheerful waving of many distant unidentifiable cheeks. But, she says, it's not like that.
They panned across?
"More like zoomed in," she says.
And?
"I'm glad I've been working out."

This is how Bullock sees it (gender issues): "We're equal on a lot of levels, but obviously when you get right down to it, there are just innate differences that should be embraced and appreciated. I went against it for so long, being so independent, saying I have to take care of myself, forge my own path, not depend on a man, open my own doors, pay for my own bills, blah blah blah. I know I'm capable of taking care of myself until I'm 100. But the simple things, like if it makes a man feel good to protect you or, if he senses danger, to push you aside, or if you're walking in a room and he puts his hand on your back- it's not a sexual thing, it's chivalry."

When Bullock was young she was afraid of other women. "I was such a tomboy," she recalls. "You'd just go and play football and run around with the boys, and I understood that." Later she found herself yearning for female friendships. Now she has a posse of female soulmates. "We're starting to dress alike," she says, " which is nice because we can buy one outfit and all wear it."

And the Bullock-buddy dress code is?

Bare feet, T-shirt, overalls. And a pair of these (points to frayed denim cutoffs hanging over a chair) are a must. It's always better if someone breaks them in, preferably a guy. The guy's butt somehow stretches them out at the bottom, gives them that nice saggy thing. And you look for sagginess there; they have to not fit tightly, they have to be schleppy, where they almost look like their going to fall off, so you look like a prepubescent, 12-year-old boy.

It's nice to know that men's useful role in society is to give jeans sagginess in the bum area.

They have to have a nice pert bottom to actually push it out. And then we put them on, and we're shaped differently, so it sags. You provide good sagginess.

The other night, Bullock was sitting with some girlfriends at her rented house and she had a thought: We should take of all our clothes and jump into the pool. So they did. They undressed, jumped, and there they were: naked, wet, floating.

Then she had another thought: What are we supposed to do now? And she couldn't think of an answer. There was no one to watch them, or to hide from, or to disobey, and their watery nakedness in itself was not enough. It all seemed a bit......pointless.

Maybe Bullock is growing up. Maybe she is just growing. Life's real changes do not announce themselves; they show themselves sneakily. The first signs are not when you find yourself doing different things but when you find yourself doing the same things and notice that they feel different. Anyway, that night she didn't float for long. She thought: Oh, that was fun. Then she climbed out and got dressed.

Today, tired of cheap, wake-jumping, sea-galloping thrills, she heads the commandeered speedboat and its four passengers away from everything. Straight out to sea. After a few minutes, she eases off the throttle. We woosh and slide to a stop. Out here it's quiet.
Time for a swim, she announces, and seconds later- still in her skimpy lace Speed 2 outfit- she slips into the water. "Come in!" she hollers. We float, treading waters in a close square, facing one another, the sunshine lighting up our limbs with shimmering golds and blues and greens. We chat about whether there are sharks in this sea, but even though there may be, I don't think we care.
I could have floated there all day: miles from land- the Caribbean, a speedboat, a movie star to interrogate. But I don't know any better. It is Bullock who leans her head to the sun and says, "Life is good right now," but it is also Bullock who is first to break formation and strike out for the boat.

© 1997 by US Magazine

US Magazine (May 95)

If you think about it, you'll remember her. In recent years, Sandra Bullock often showed up as third-tier characters. There she is in "The Vanishing", with barely enough time to flash her Mentadent smile before Jeff Bridges boxes and buries her. There she is in "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" as an ineffably melancholic hash-slinger and in "The Thing Called Love" as a tin-eared fluffbrain. According to her curriculum vitae, she made her major screen debut in 1992's "Love Potion No. 9". For the record, that cartoony love story didn't really work; it's worth noting mostly because it also featured Tate Donovan (her sometimes ex-boyfriend who, if you read between the lines, makes a few uncredited appearances in our conversation below). For all of the cult status bestowed upon 1993's "Demolition Man", no one mentioned that Sylvester Stallone never seemed like a seasoned jokesmith before Bullock provided him with her tip-top comic setups. It was only last summer that she and Keanu Reeves appeared in the action hit "Speed". While Reeves' act was a triumph of deft physicality, it was Bullock, with her smart-alecky line readings and her can-do demeanor, who managed to make us forget that she was executing most of her scenes from a stage the size of a bus driver's seat. The result? Snap! She flew ahead of the sizable ingenue pack and began receiving scripts in which the action revolved around her. While it's true that in her new movie, "While You Were Sleeping", she has co-stars - Bill Pullman and Peter Gallagher - she was the one hired to carry the romantic comedy. "As excited as she was, it was also scary for her," says Sleeping director Jon Turteltaub. "It's daunting to say 'If I suck this movie will suck, too.' " To make it more of a stress test, everyone in show biz knew that the film was originally meant for Demi Moore (whose fee was too high). As it turns out, Bullock, who plays an emotionally isolated subway employee, turns in her wittiest, most textured performance to date. Since then, the 28-year-oldArlington,Va., native has proved that she's either in a zone or out of her mind. Included in her string of back-to-back projects is "The Net", a techno-thriller on which director-producer Irwin Winkler found Bullock "bubbling with great ideas. She'd make notes all over her script, then come to me and say, 'What about this and this and this?' " After that, she teams up with Denis Leary in his hard-core comedy "Two If By Sea". There is talk of her playing a brainy law clerk in Joel Schumacher's goldstar project "A Time to Kill" before she goes on to "Kate and Leopold", a low-budget flick which she also plans to produce. So nowshe is a movie star, but exactly the kind you hoped she'd be: On a Culver City sound stage where she is shooting "The Net", she greets you with an outstretched hand, a mouth set at full throttle and a celebrity posse that consists of her 25 year-old law student sister, Gesine, who is reading a textbook. But somehow it was this strikingly frill-less image that made Bullock's subsequent behavior seem all the more poignant. A couple of days after our first meeting, she made a Garboesque retreat, leaving a heretofore unseen assortment of official handlers to explain for her. Then, unexpectedly, she resurfaced via telephone three days later. And one can't help but suspect that this actress, who is so wedded to the notion that she can fill every request, is currently in the midst of an unsettling crash course in how implausible that notion might be. But on this afternoon, Bullock comes off so decidedly uncomplicated that when she needs primping, an on-staff hair stylist does it by grabbing the actress's head, then, using open palms, flattening her unruly locks like they were wrinkles on a bed. As for the place on her trailer door where the DO NOT DISTURB sign usually goes? That's where Bullock has taped a handmade poster featuring a photo of her belove Jack Russell terrier.

First things first: Explain the sign on your trailer door.

My dog, Luigi, got stolen (deep sigh). It happened outside a friend's house. He was there for, like, two minutes, and then he was gone. He was heavily tagged, and everybody in that neighborhood knows him. So we just put posters up everywhere. I stuck one the door because when we go on location, people always look on the outside of these things. I figure someone will find him eventually. People who don't have dogs don't understand. I called him the Ambassoder of Goodwill because everybody loved him. He was like a little Italian man in a Jack Russell terrier's body. (In an Italian accent) "Hel-lo, very nice-a to see you. You look-a beautiful, very nice. I'm-a going to kiss-a your wife's feet." Sometimes I feel like an idiot because people ask, "Why are you so depressed?" (Wistfully) "Because Weej is missing....." I lost a dog once when the airlines killed it. I thought it was the end of my world.

The airlines killed your dog? How?

You know how they put the cage on the little conveyor belt to take it to (the cargo hold). Apparently somebody had taken her off and placed her cage in front of the exhaust pipe of the conveyor belt. She had carbon-monoxide poisoning. She was alive for two weeks and then died. Six months later, I'd be at a nice dinner, and someone would say "How are you?" And I was like: "I'm fine. (Huge, gasping sob) My dog was.....killed!" And they're like, "Sorry I asked!" I'm trying to find another direction for my life other than the dissapearance of my dogs.When everything else is coming apart, your work must provide some solace. Especially when you're paired with attractive leading men.

Is chemistry an extension of the job, or does it just happen?

You know, I've experienced chemistry with people. It doesn't have to be sexual-it just makes you alive, makes you do things you didn't expect to do. It makes people watching the screen go, "There's something going on here"- and there is. But it doesn't mean you're going to go off and get married afterward- it just means that you enjoy each other's company. You know what else? When my humor clicks with someone else's. When you throw things out at the audition and they volley it right back, you're like "This is gonna befun!" That's what it was like with Bill Pullman. The minute he walked in the room.That sounds simple enough.When you do scenes where you have to look at somebody off-camera in a loving way, you feel like a complete ding-dong. How do you look when you're in love? But I would look off-camera, and Bill would give me one of those looks where you just melt, I would have heart palpitations. I had no problem looking at him and thinking, this guy is wonderful. I respect what he stands for as an actor and as a human being. He has a family, and he's a devoted husband, and he's great and funny.Around film sets, you are known as one who appreciates a good practical joke.

How elaborate are your pranks?

I don't do anything where somebody's going to get their eye put out, put it that way. But on the last show I did, me and a crew member had it out for each other in the best way. So I got a big fire extinguisher and I had someone tell him: "Go get Sandy. She's on the set and she's being difficult." He came out, and I completely doused him. Things like that. The panic of knowing that you're going to be walking around the corner and something's going to happen. It just keeps your energy going all day.

What's falls under the category of going too far?

Just don't draw blood, that's all I ask.

You're a hacker in 'The Net,' and in real life you subscribe to America Online. How often do you visit cyberspace?

I haven't been on in two months, because my modem broke. When I first got on AOL, I went on the chat lines. But I would always say something and nobody would ever respond. And I'd feel like: "Hello! Hello! Doesn't what I have to say matter to anybody out here?" I hated that.

Here are a few questions that your AOL fan base suggested that I ask you: "Has she ever met other Washington-Lee (high school) graduates?

They are Warren Beatty and Shirley McLaine."I worked in a movie- Wrestling Ernest Hemingway- with Shirley McLaine and never got to meet her. I've never met Warren Beatty. I've seen Warren Beatty, though.

Where?

I was standing on Melrose Avenue with a friend. I looked like garbage. All of a sudden, Warren Beatty drove by in a beautiful black car with the window down. It was almost like in slow motion. I was saying to myself, "Oh my God, that's Warren Beatty." And then my friend screamed, "Oh my God, that's Warren Beatty!" He was, like, staring straight at us, looking beautiful and probably thinking, those are the most uncool people on Melrose Avenue.

More than one of your followers wants to know, "What's Sandy's favorite food?"

My No. 1 favorite food is Kentucky Fried Chicken, extra crispy, with mashed potatoes, biscuits and corn on the cob. This is something I just can't do without.

Several people wrote about Mrs. Filpi, your high school drama teacher.

Why?(Laughs) Mrs. Filpi and I had this love-hate thing going. I always questioned authority. Especially in drama class. It was funny because she would often get on my case. She'd say, "If you make a D in this class, don't ask me why." Then, of course, I would give it that pregnant pause and then say, "Why?" (Laughs)

You mouthed off to Mrs. Filpi?

When you're young and you don't know how to home in on what you have, you behave in nightmarish ways. That's what Mrs. Filpi got tired of. But I think we reached a level of respect at the end of the last year of school. We had to do these monologues, and I was like (defiantly), "I'm not even going to bother memorizing one, because I'm just so over this!" So I just rambled for two minutes about being a beautician in a mortuary. At the end, she was like: "Great! Where did you get that?" And I said (cautiously), "Well, what grade did I get?" And she said, "You got an A." And I said, "Will I still get the A if I tell you that I have no idea what I just said?" I'm sure I gave her a couple of gray hairs (laughs).

Even though we're adults, when it comes down to basic needs and wants, we're still essentially the same people we were in the seventh grade.Based on that theory, describe yourself in the seventh grade.

Oh my God! I was a little behind the times- or a little ahead of the times. I couldn't quite figure out which. I was still in the velvet green bell-bottoms when everybody else was wearing straight legs, because I'd just come back from Germany. And I always had these stupid little barretes holding my hair back. I was just a couple of beats off.

You weren't "Most Likely To Succeed"?

Actually, I was voted "Most Likely to Brighten Up Your Day"- I was so proud when I went up there and won that award. I wasn't going to rule the world or be president, but I was going to make you laugh or make your day a little better. That's why I think I'm attracted to comedy so much- it's really hard to make people laugh. Most of the time they've heard it all. If you can come up with something new, that makes them feel good.

Let's talk about your early life as a globe-trotter. Your mother was an opera singer who often worked in Europe- did it bother you to be constantly uprooted?

As a kid you hate it- we were constantly being carted back and forth during opera season. But now the things that I know how to do! I can knit you a sweater in four days. I can speak German. I can show you the place in Salzburg where Mozart was born. I think my sister and I are incredibly open-minded people. We're not afraid to travel, to be thrown into things. When I have kids, I want them to be that way. Even though my mother took me kicking and screaming half the time, now I look back and I think it's a really good thing.

While self-sufficiency is a positive thing, recall a recent experience that made you wish you'd brought company along.

I went to Beverly Hot Springs the other day, and I was tired, I still had make-up on, and I'm sitting there, and all of a sudden I hear "Sandy? Sandy?" I can't see-it's steamy, it's foggy. I'm naked, getting scrubbed and massaged, and somebody's caling out my name. You know, it's weird. But at least it was somebody I knew really well.

And you went there alone because......?

I'm trying to force myself to do things like that. This is my discovery period. This is the first time I've been alone.....since I was born, I think. Being by myself has been a long, really tough adjustment period. It makes you painfully aware of who you really are, as opposed to who you put on when everybody else is around. (Pause) Not that I like it all the time. Sometimes it's miserable, because you come home, and it's dark, and it's late, and you're thinking: I am so alone right now. I just want somebody to brush my hair, tuck me into bed, turn on the alarm.

Do you socialize out of necessity, or is it a natural impulse for you?

I'm the kind of person who wants to know how to do it all myself. That way, I don't have to call up everybody and burden them. But I'm getting to the point now where I know how to do it all by myself. I'm at the point where I'm like: "I'm tired of being responsible. Will somebody else drive the car please?" I'm going through this period where I wish I had it in me to be irresponsible, late, rebellious, stay out until five o'clock in the morning. I wish I was not so much about being on time, always having it together- when, in fact, I want to be a slacker. I want to be somebody who has a bag of stuff and just goes.

When do you plan to put this personality adjustment into effect?

I had this epiphany: After I finish these next two films, I'm going to get three friends-one friend I always go on vacation with is Samantha (Mathis)- and we're going to get a big old RV with televisions and VCR's and great music, and drive from one end of the United States down through the bottom. So what if it's two miles to the gallon? I don't care. I'm going to Nashville. I'm going to Elvis' house. To New Orleans. I'm going to eat grilled-cheese sandwhiches the whole way and let my skin break out. I'll never change out of my overalls.

Do you believe, as some therapists do, that dreams are your anxieties revisited in a creative way?

I have dreams where I go on the set and forget my lines. I have dreams with (other cast members) in them. "The Net" I probably couldn't have done a year ago. "While You Were Sleeping", I never would have been able to do except for at that time- I was going through a really rough period.......I'm sorry. I'm lost. What are we talking about?Dreaming. I'm getting to the dreaming part. (Laughs) I ramble sometimes. In fact, I can take care of three different conversations at once. My friends get that Ricki Lake look.Don't you love that look that Ricki gets when things get out of hand? Like she can't believe what's happening? That's the way my friends look at me sometimes. Like, "I'm scared!"

You remodeled your house yourself. What's your technique for making construction skills seem nonthreatening to guys.

I don't do that good of a job. (Laughs) I'm good at what I'm good at, and other things I can't do. But I like people who work with their hands, who create with their hands. I don't care whether it's ripping things out or writing, painting or sculpting. Because I can't do that. I can barely write letters. I can't even draw stick figures. But I can lay tile, knock down walls. I do as much manual labor as I can because it stops me from thinking, gives my mind a rest. And there's this satisfaction when someone walks into my house and says, "Great floor!"and I go"Thanks I did that myself." I love that. But I'm not intimidating at all. To somebody who's never lifted a hammer I might be intimidating, but those aren't the kind of people in my life. Everyone I know is really good with a hammer.

In order to have a romantic relationship with you, must a man know his way around a Sears tool department?

It would be preferable that he did. Because I do. If he didn't know his way around the Sears tool department, I wish he'd know his way around the M.A.C.cosmetics counter. Because he should know something that I do or something that I don't. It would be great to be involved in a romantic relationship with someone who knew what a drill and a bit were. Or at least be willing to learn.

What's the most startling place you've ever seen a likeness of yourself?

My sister. (Laughs) No, the scariest place I've ever seen a likeness of me is on a pinball machine. Once I went into a bar and my friend goes, "Oh my God." And I looked at this pinball machine for five minutes before I realized it wasSylvester, Wesley, and me. Then it was "Oh my God! Do I look like that?" And you do......but you're thinking, I thought I was so much hotter than that. (Laughs) I had that futuristic (Demolition Man) hairdo. That was a shock, because when I started that film, my hair was down to here (points to the middle of her back).

How did you feel about completely transforming your appearance?It was very liberating. You know why?

A friend of mine told had told me, "You're like Stevie Nicks with this mane of hair that you just hide behind." So I thought, okay, maybe I need to get used to not using it at a shield. So they cut it off, and I felt like I had a whole new life. I bought a whole new wardrobe. And by the end of the week......I hated it. I have such thick, wild hair that I looked like Roseanne Roseannadanna. It just wasn't me.

And a "you" haircut would be?

"Speed" was more like a "me" haircut because it was more shredded. If anything is too perfectly laid out, I can't deal with it. I need to be able to look messy. I like hair to look real. This is my hair. They'll say, "Sandy, face facts: You can't look like a pig. You have to look somewhat attractive on this film." And I'm like (doggedly) "It's not real." So I try to find a happy medium. I can understand that no one wants me with a garbage can over my head. But if I'm supposed to have been running for an hour? I should be out of breath, sweaty. I hate it (in movies) when some one had been madly making out and they still have a full face of make-up. What's that about? When I'm doing that, my make-up starts on one side and winds up on the other.

A 'Speed' question: What was going through your head as you were sliding out from the bottom of the bus with Keanu Reeves?

The thing was, my dress kept flying over my head as we were sliding. They tried two-sided tape, but it kept blowing up. So I asked Keanu to hold it down. All he kept hearing was "Hold down my dress. Just hold down my dress." I mean, wouldn't you worry about that? I had no time to think, Oh, this is nice. All I was thinking was, Oh my God, I'm going to be naked!

Much has been made of your Everywoman appeal. Do you think, as your marquee value rises, that audiences will continue to buy you in working-class roles like the token-taker in "While You Were Sleeping"?

I do think that I could always play a token-taker if I wanted to. You know, some people are just glamourous, and you think: You're a movie star. You can't help it because you're gorgeous. You have it, you like it, you are that way. People don't look at me that way. (Laughs) But, like everyone, I have my moments when I feel sexy and good, and then I work it for everything it's worth. I go to the grocery store, I go to the mall, and I work it. I stop when they whistle and I say (benevolently) "Thank you." (Laughs)

Recall a time and place when you felt like everything was working.

I love to go into clubs and dance. That's when I feel sexy- I know I'm sexy. (Pause) I might be living in my own little world here, you know? (Laughs) When I go to Salsa and Latin clubs, when me and my partner are dancing to great music, a different side of me comes out. I dress differently. The skirts are short, you wear the higher heel, the tighter top. You know, your hair is everywhere. I suddenly become Charo. I am Charo reincarnated. (In a dramatic hiss) "Don't speak to me! I'm s-s-smokin'!"

Do you think that personal happiness comes from knowing how to duplicate that self-assurance, or accepting that it comes and goes?

Half the time I have no idea what I'm doing. The only thing I know is that I seem to barrel into things. I get going in a direction, and I have to ride it out. Then I get bored with that and go in the next direction. It justs depends on the day. Some days I have it together, and I feel good about myself. Other days I'm in my car, and I almost kill entire families because I'm "off" for some reason. These days, instead of worrying about it I tell myself: "You know what? I think this is what they call life, and I think I'm just going to stay and deal with it."

© 1995 by US Magazine

NEW YORK (AP) -- Like her character in "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous," Sandra Bullock has entered a new career phase.

After so many romantic comedies, the actress says 2002's "Two Weeks Notice" may have been her last hurrah in the genre. Co-star Hugh Grant was the "ultimate partner" and a fitting way to go out, she says.

She'll co-star in the upcoming independent movie "Crash" and is days away from wrapping a film based on Truman Capote's writing of "In Cold Blood" (she plays Harper Lee, Capote's childhood friend and author of "To Kill a Mockingbird"). A reunion with "Speed" co-star Keanu Reeves is in the works as well; they'll pair up for "Il Mare," a romantic drama.

While "Miss Congeniality 2" may seem like more conventional Bullock fare, it does have some twists. Bullock returns as FBI agent Gracie Hart, but because of the fame brought on by her crime-busting success in the first movie, she can no longer go undercover. Instead, she becomes the agency's spokeswoman -- but can't bear to stay uninvolved in investigations.

Q: What attracted you to doing a sequel to "Miss Congeniality?"

Bullock: Marc Lawrence, the writer. He and I work together, obviously, a lot. We were doing something else a year later and he was talking about it and nobody was talking about it as a sequel or part two. He said, "Well, let me put it on paper." And I went, "I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. There's nothing else to tell." And he goes, "What have you always wanted to do? What have you always wanted to say?" ... I said as long as it's Gracie and it's something that I really like and that I think people don't say enough in films.

AP: You've recently been quoted saying you've grown tired of romantic comedies. After movies such as "Forces of Nature," "Love Potion No. 9" and "While You Were Sleeping," why?

Bullock: I just said I'm not going to do them for a while. And all of a sudden they were like, (deep voice) "You're never, ever doing them?" ... I had nothing else to say in that department -- I'm not the expert. ... I favor right now the comedy in "Miss Congeniality" so much more. ... I like the challenge of that a lot more than the comedy being revolved around landing the dude.

AP: Was it important to you that your partner in "Miss Congeniality 2" be a woman? There aren't many female buddy movies.

Bullock: I didn't know why. When I made the first "Miss Congeniality," I wondered why is it that all the comedies are always romantic comedies? Why can't I be like a physical comedian? I would literally ask, "What is Jim Carrey not doing, and can we change it to a female?" For some reason, they didn't think that women would be accepted being that physical and that out there. ... No one ever shows women watching out for one and other. We're either scratching each other's eyes out or stealing each other's husbands or there's a lead woman and there's a best friend who usually is a better written role and has two scenes.

AP: You seem to be conscious of portraying a strong, funny independent woman on-screen.

Bullock: It's not so much conscious, it just is -- if that's viewed as strong and independent. I mean, I find people's weaknesses really strong. If they can say "something screwed up and I don't know how to fix it and I made a huge mistake." It's just what I believe. It's for men and women. I like the misfits. I like the awkward feeling. I like the people who feel like they're absolutely inept and have no place -- and that's basically everybody.

AP: Do you get a lot of scripts that fit the bill?

Bullock: Not a lot. But there's a lot of good material and a lot of great writers and that's why I've had a production company (Fortis Films) for a long time. We develop our own.

AP: Do you enjoy working as a producer, as you did on this film?

Bullock: The nice thing about it is I have complete say in the business. Nothing gets past, whether it's how the Web site is set up internationally or what things will be used in our film overseas, product placement. I'm like, 'Look, I'm not a product placement kind of person.' ... But I like to micromanage that way.

AP: You turned 40 last July, which puts you in rarified air as an A-list actress. Why do you think actresses traditionally have not had much longevity?

Bullock: I have no idea. I'm working more than I ever have. The whole 40 thing has been a media thing. I've never been asked that question more since I've been on this press junket. There was no big party. Nobody asked me what it was like to turn 36 -- that was a hell of a year. ... It depends on what you base your career on. If it's based on youth, then when the youth is going, you should find something else to base it on. I don't consider myself just an actor. ... I don't think when people think of me, they think of here's the sex symbol that must maintain x, y and z. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that that's how I'm perceived and I'm very happy about that.

AP: I've often heard you described as someone men want to date and women want to be friends with.

Bullock: That's a good perception. I like that one. ... But the most important thing out of both of those is having the women as your friends.

Artikel

The Sunday Times (Februar 2006)

Sandra Bullock to flatten her £4m house of horrors
by John Harlow - February 5th, 2006

IN an explosive ending worthy of Hollywood, Sandra Bullock, the star of Miss Congeniality, is preparing to demolish her £4m “dream home” in Texas in the culmination of a long wrangle with the builders. Bullock spent years designing the lakeside mansion in Austin, complete with towers and spires, a spa, library and cinema. But two nights after moving in she moved out again, claiming that the house was a potential deathtrap with a leaking roof, toxic mould, unsafe fireplaces, faulty wiring and crumbling walls.

Bullock sued her builders, winning £3.9m in damages and penalties. She has not yet been able to collect the money to carry out repairs and has opted instead for a cheaper solution: tearing the house down and starting again.

“She’s going to blow it up, demolish it,” said a spokesman for the actress. “She will be pressing the button, or whatever you do to make the wrecking ball go — probably this coming week.”

The saga has already had one dramatic result: following last spring’s trial, the Texan authorities introduced a new law which has become known as the “Bullock Warranty”, obliging builders to guarantee the quality of their work.

Critics say the cost of litigation is such that victims will have to be as rich as Bullock, who earns up to £10m a film, to enforce such an agreement. They nevertheless acknowledge it as a victory in the never-ending struggle between home-owners and shoddy workers.

Bullock has not been left homeless during the eight-year dispute. The 41-year-old actress has another home in Austin as well as flats in Los Angeles and New York and, despite an intense allergy to horses, a property in the “urban cowboy” town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

She nevertheless considers Austin her “little piece of blue heaven” where she feels free to go out “dressed like a pig”.

The city is known for alternative lifestyles reflected in a popular T-shirt slogan, “Keep Austin weird”. Her estate on River Hills Road is on Lake Austin, opposite a park where an annual music festival is held.

Bullock moved to Austin after she first tasted fame in the 1994 thriller Speed. Advised by John Bullock, her father and manager, she planned a £1m, 5,000 sq ft house on the shore. But Benny Daneshjou, then the most fashionable builder in Austin, said he could double the size for an extra £300,000.

She accepted Daneshjou’s offer but, as she later told the court, the bills starting flowing in and soon reached £4m — at one point she was sinking £500,000 a month into the “money pit”. She ordered a halt to the construction in 2000, when she realised that she was losing control of the project.

A year later Daneshjou sued her over unpaid bills, so she counter-sued for fraud. The dispute ended in court last spring. During the eight-week trial Bullock cried and cracked jokes at her lawyers’ expense — “You guys are pricey. It’s going to be a good Christmas for you, isn’t it?”— but maintained that she was suing the builder out of principle.

Her lawyers described the mansion as the “house of broken dreams”. The damages that Bullock won were the largest awarded in a private housing dispute in Texas. But she is still pursuing the builder through the courts, claiming that he has “hidden” many assets by signing them over to his wife.

Despite having told newspapers that she was bored with acting, Bullock has returned to work, partly to pay for a new house. She has just finished shooting her comeback film, a supernatural romance with Keanu Reeves, her co-star in Speed.

Bullock is said to be amused by the film’s title: it is called The Lake House.

Copyright ©2006 The Sunday Times

EUROPOLITAN

Sandra Bullock reicht Klage gegen Stalker ein

Los Angeles - Hollywood-Schauspielerin Sandra Bullock fürchtet sich vor erneuten Verfolgungsjagden ihres ehemaligen Stalkers Thomas James Weldon. Bis jetzt ist der Stalker noch in Behandlung in einer geschlossenen Anstalt.

Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz, Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton...Die Liste der Stars ist lang und sie alle haben eines gemeinsam. Sie werden von Stalkern belästigt und verfolgt. Auch Sandra Bullock fürchtet sich vor weiteren Nachrichten ihres Stalkers. 2003 hatte sie erstmals gegen ihn geklagt.

Seit 2003 ist Thomas James Weldon deshalb Patient in der geschlossenen Anstalt – und bis 2009 muss er von der Schauspielerin („Speed“, „Während Du Schliefst“, „Miss Undercover“) Abstand halten. Er hatte sie in der Vergangenheit mit Anrufen, Faxen und E-Mails verfolgt, war ihr durch mehrere US-Staaten nachgereist und hatte ihr Geschenkpakete zugeschickt.

Die Schauspielerin fürchtet sich nun vor einer Freilassung Weldons. Deshalb reichte sie schon im Voraus beim Gericht im Bundesstaat Tennesse eine Klage ein, über eine Entlassung des Stalkers sofort informiert zu werden. „Ich mache mir weiterhin Sorgen um meine eigene Sicherheit und die meiner Familie“ machte sie im Juni in Gerichtspapieren geltend. (jul)
veröffentlicht am: 25.09.2006