The Blind Side
There is no denying that if you’ve loved watching movies since your early childhood, you’ve most probably heard of her name or even watched one of her movies. Your parents may even have a preference for her and they have expressed that countless of times when asked about who their favorite 90’s actress was.
Chris Pizzello/AP Photo
Sandra Bullock is considered a darling of the public, since so many people just admire her for her talent and her attitude towards fans even when she’s high up the A-list ladder. But as much as she is a public figure, she’s also very notorious about her life being kept private. And that includes details about her husband’s infidelity and her two adopted children. Now, as she’s back in the limelight, facts about her are revealed.
Her Early Years
Sandra was born on July 26, 1964 in Arlington, Virginia. But unlike most families who settle in one place for a certain period of time, they kept travelling all throughout Europe. Her father, John Bullock, was a US Army employee and a part-time voice coach which her mother, Helga Mathilde Meyer, was an opera singer.
@sbullockweb/Twitter
After a long itinerary of places they visited, her parents decided it was time to settle down. They had spent 12 years in Germany and Austria and therefore allowing Sandra to absorb and learn the language too. She also studied music and dance at the Waldorf School in Nuremberg.
Moving Back To The US
When Sandra turned 12 years old, her family decided that it was time to return to the US. And so, they moved to Washington D.C. Sandra was a bright and happy child and so when she started school at the Washington-Lee High School, she had no problem fitting in. She would later involve herself in extracurricular activities like cheerleading and theater.
@sbullockweb/Twitter
Sandra had adjusted so well to life in the US and made so many friends that she became one of the more notable students during her time. She graduated high school in 1982 and went on to study college at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina to further study on acting. But, just three credits shy of earning her Bachelor’s degree, she quit college.
Big Apple
Sandra has always been a fan of the Hollywood life and dreamed of becoming a Broadway superstar. So that’s when she decided that in order to achieve it, she needed to move. Her parents had no choice but to let her as they also knew she had the potential more than anyone else, as parents do. Sandra moved to New York and worked as a bartender to support her dream.
Amazon UK
All while juggling jobs to support herself, she took acting classes with Sanford Meisner and landed a gig in on Off-Broadway production. Because she had such striking potential, many people could see it too. She was part of the No Time Flat play and would then land herself an agent that led to more minor acting jobs in B-movies and television.
Big Break
There were so many opportunities waiting for Sandra and soon, she would realize that the leap of faith and the sacrifices she had to endure was so worth it. Before she was cast as Annie Porter in the hit movie Speed, other A-Listers like Halle Berry and Ellen DeGeneres were also considered for the role.
Twentieth Century Fox
Because the lady heroine will be working alongside Keanu Reeves, she would need to have good chemistry with him. So, the producers had her read through the script with Keanu. In an interview she did with Entertainment Weekly, she recalls that she had to do “”all these physical scenes together, rolling around on the floor and stuff.”
Adoption
Sandra was already really successful in her acting career having done a lot of hit movies over the years, but there was just something inside of her that said she needed something else to complete her life. So, shortly after the Oscars on March 2010, she announced to the public that she was in the process of adopting a son.
Ray Tamarra/Getty Images
She and her then-husband, Jesse James, had already began the adoption process four months before the announcement. However, the couple later on filed for divorce so she had to do everything alone and continue the adoption as a single parent.
Lady Luck
Sandra’s hard work all those years of fending and trying to make a name for herself is finally paying off. She received her first her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. But her achievements did not stop there.
Hollywood Pictures
All throughout the nineties, she appeared in a few more hit movies including The Net and A Time To Kill. She always had a desire to expand horizons and become a versatile actress. So when she was cast as the lead actress in 28 days, she pushed herself to the limits in order to bring out an award-worthy performance.
Regrets Always Come Last
Sandra had wished that someone could have warned her not to make a sequel for Speed. She only agreed to appear in the sequel to get some type of financial backing for her next film, Hope Floats. She was doing all that she could to see through it.
Blue Tulip Productions
In one interview she did with The Nation, Sandra expressed how she felt about doing the movie. “I’ve always been at the helm of what I do. There’s never been anything that someone said ‘I think you should do… except for Speed 2, which I wish someone would have done.”
Brief Hiatus
One particular role that she was made famous for was from her movie Miss Congeniality. She took on the role of an FBI agent that went undercover during the Miss United States beauty pageant. The role would later earn the actress her second Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.
NSTARimages
However, right after the movie broke box office records, she announced that she was going to take a hiatus. And in 2002, she returned to the big screen. She starred in the movie, Murder By Numbers, and played a detective who was tasked to track down a duo of thrill-killers.
Animal Allergy
Sandra’s fame immediately went sky-high after her movie Speed came out. She of course had tons of projects in line after the movie scored enormous box office earnings and that included starring in a 1996 rom-com movie alongside Denis Leary called Two If By Sea.
Warner Bros.
As she was shooting one of the scenes in the movie, she discovered something about herself. It turns out, that she was unfortunately allergic to horses. And to make matters worse, her days of conquering her allergies was for naught when the movie wasn’t received so well by the public.
Love Life
Throughout her career as a successful actress, you would expect a lot of men pining for her. And yes, that is true. She was once engaged to Tate Donovan with whom she met on the set of one of her movies, Love Potion No. 9. However, their engagement was called off and shortly after, she dated Ryan Gosling.
Getty Images
The media was in a frenzy when news broke out that she was dating another hotshot actor. She was sixteen years older than Ryan and they dated for a little over a year. It was right about the times she was filming another movie of hers called Two Weeks Notice and her co-star, Hugh Grant, gave her a difficult time teasing her because of it. Hugh even named Ryan “The Child” and would mimic a baby just to annoy her.
A Survivor
A lot of people were shocked to find out the terrifying experience that Sandra had to go through back in 2000. She and her then-boyfriend, musician Bob Schneider travelled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the holidays. It was supposed to be a dream vacation but it quickly turned into a nightmare.
AP Photo
According to sources, because it wasn’t such an ideal weather to travel, being that the town was struck with heavy snowfall at the time, the pilot may have gotten confused and mistook a set of ground lights thereby causing the plane to skid off the runway. Fortunately, the couple and two crew members were unharmed.
Side Businesses
Because of Sandra’s success in the film industry, it is understandable that she’s decided to put her money in avenues that are profitable and would keep a steady cash flow. She opened her own restaurant called Bess Bistro in Texas. It started out as a French cuisine type of establishment but since bringing in a new executive chef, it revamped its menu.
Lynette58/TripAdvisor
She didn’t limit her business ventures there, like any sensible person would. She also decided to open a hybrid bakery, deli and flower ship in 2009 called Walton’s Fancy & Staple. The establishment is thriving even until today, however, she had to turn over Bess Bistro to new owners in September of 2015.
Dislike For Musicals
Sandra has expressed countless of times that she hates musicals. However, many people find this fact ironic about her and almost laughable considering that she’s studied music in the past as well as her parents’ professions way back when.
Getty Images
She admitted this on an interview she did with Harper’s Bazaar. Despite her being in a children’s choir growing up, she says she’s never belonged to any type of musical play all her life. She made this clear to everybody that she dislikes them which is why she has appeared in so many genres of films but not one that requires her to sing or dance the whole movie through.
Rollercoaster Marriage
Sandra’s love life was something that was so open to the public being that she was a public figure. So when reporters caught wind of a romance brewing between Sandra and Jesse James, the motorcycle builder and host of both Monster Garage and Jesse James Is A Dead Man, they were immediately on to them.
Getty Images
According to sources close to the couple, Sandra’s 10-year-old godson had always been a huge fan of Jesse and so she arranged for him to meet Jesse and that’s where they met. They married back in 2005 but went through a rough time when James had to go through custody battle with James’ second ex-wife, former adult film actress Janine Lindemulder. Eventually, Jesse won full legal custody of his 5-year-old daughter.
Terrible Scandal
Shortly after overcoming the battle of custody together with Jesse’s former wife, it would seem as if nothing was going right. Another scandal broke the internet and a lot of people had questions. A number of women came forward and claimed to have had affairs with Jesse while he was married to Sandra.
BauerGriffin.com
Jesse immediately issued a public apology to Sandra in hopes to remedy the rising issue. On March 30, 2010, Jesse’s publicist announced that Jesse had voluntarily checked into a rehabilitation facility to “deal with personal issues” and save his marriage to Sandra. However, Sandra on the other hand had already made up her mind and filed for divorce that was finalized on June 28, 2010.
Obsessed
It was sometime in late April 2007 when news broke that Jesse almost got ran over by an overly obsessed fan of Sandra. It was a woman named Marcia Diana Valentine and she lay outside the couple’s home in Orange County in hopes to see Sandra but when Jesse confronted her, she ran to her car and almost tried to run him over.
mirror.co.uk
They had called the cops prior and so they got there in time to apprehend the woman. She was charged with one felony count each of aggravated assault and stalking. As expected, she pleaded not guilty to these charges and was sentenced to three years probation.
Another Hit
As time had passed, it was beginning to get more obvious to film producers and directors that almost Sandra had the Midas touch. She starred in the true-story drama called The Blind Side and it immediately gained a lot of traction. She played Leah Anne Toughy, a wife and mother who brings Michael Oher into their family.
IMDb
The movie earned so many praises from critics and avid fans. And not only that, Sandra won Best Actress at the Academy Awards and finally took home a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress In A Drama. However, soon after the success, Sandra then again took another hiatus.
Comeback
It isn’t always easy when you try and re-enter the Hollywood spotlight. It goes with its challenges, especially when it comes to putting yourself out there again and ensuring that you make a really good impression. Fortunately for Sandra, her comeback movie The Heat that she starred together with Melissa McCarthy became a hit.
20th Century Studios
The movie received a lot of positive reviews because of the obvious chemistry and performance of both actresses. It was a buddy-cop type of comedy movie and the dynamics they both had was very easy on the eyes. This helped Sandra gain confidence in herself again.
When One Door Closes
She was still in the prime of her career and even though she took quite a hiatus, people still loved to see her on the big screen. So after The Heat, another opportunity opened for her and she immediately took it. She took on the lead role of the movie Gravity which garnered about $720 million at the worldwide box office.
Warner Bros.
Because the movie was such a hit, this led to another Academy Award nomination for her. And not only that, she was named as the 2013 Entertainer of the Year by Entertainment Weekly. But this isn’t her first stint, she earned the same recognition back in 2008.
Highest Grossing Film
It was in 2015 when Sandra lent her voice to Scarlet Overkill, the villain in the animated movie, Minions. She had not expected for it to gain so much popularity when it came out especially when it grossed a total of $1.159 billion worldwide. This would top her highest-grossing films to date.
@alec_behan/Twitter
In the same year, she starred as a political consultant hired to help win a Bolivian presidential election in the drama Our Brand Is Crisis and also executive produced the same movie. It was definitely something that she’s wanted to do for quite some time and it did gain a lot of attention as well.
Bird Box
Sandra had already so many movies lined up to last her a lifetime but she gave way to her first ever Netflix-produced movie. Because the streaming service was very popular and the number of viewers every second are steadily increasing, it was one of the best decisions she’s ever made in her entire career.
Netflix
Just after seven days from its release, Netflix had reported that her movie, Bird Box had the biggest seven-day viewership for any of its original films to date. It was estimated that over 45 million watched the movie during that timeframe. Quite an incredible feat conquered indeed by someone who’s contributed so much to the film industry for most of her life.