Entertainment Guide (December 1998)

“Hope Floats”

High for Sandra Bullock

The squinty-eyed, wrinkle-nosed smile. The anxious hand running through hair. The gesturing hands. Is everything that Sandra Bullock does charming? It appears so.

For all of her obvious talents, Bullock would be truly challenged by taking on an unsympathetic role. How could the actress be credible as someone unlikable?

She's simply too appealing.

Surprisingly, while Bullock recently said she's done all she "can do acting-wise," and is on a year hiatus from the acting world, what she hasn't done is make audiences dislike her

She's proven, with her starring and first-time producing role in Hope Floats that she can open a movie. She's also demonstrated, through roles in the much-maligned (by critics and Bullock herself) Speed 2: Cruise Control and the big-budget John Grisham's A Time To Kill, that she can command a deserved top salary.

Why do audiences embrace Bullock so completely? Why has she eclipsed Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan as America's sweetheart?

Bullock dislikes the competitive aura the media imposes on young actresses. Simply that she publicly eschews the pitting of one actress against another endears her She just seems so nice, and she's garnered a huge fan following.

Bullock is accessible. That's not to say the actress, once an avid Internet surfer makes herself available to the public. Yet there's something so absolutely captivating about Bullock that nearly everyone feels they could know her - or that they do.

Bullock embodies that best girlfriend of the past, that person whom you wish you were still in touch with, whom you actively miss and think of often. From her first starring role in Love Potion No. 9 to her latest live-action release, Practical Magic, she effectively emits credible compassion.

This is no surprise to those who've known "Sandy" since her youth. As a high school senior she was voted "Class Clown" and "Most Likely to Brighten Your Day" honors that easily apply to her today Bullock, uniquely beautiful, is blessed with an enviable figure and face - a face she's comfortable contorting. Remember her "Groucho" eyebrows in Love Potion No. 9 or her Practical Magic nerdy high school character? Bullock is at ease enough in her own beauty to be dressed way down on screen.

When life gave her the lemons and disappointment of Speed 2, she happily made lemonade in the form of frothy Hope Floats. After experiencing what it was like to be on a poorly developed project from an actor's perspective, it gave her the strength to step behind the scenes.

"It was just time," she said thoughtfully seated comfortably at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena, Calif. "I had done it with short films and I had done it with theatre If you're blamed enough for something, at least you want to be responsible for what you're being blamed for I love that process of being in it from the beginning. As an actor you show up for your read-through, and then you go in and rehearse and then shoot the film. You're not a part of what made that house so great to shoot in, or what location, or the choice of all the other actors. Not always, but I love to be involved in some of the aspects of projects I'm in."

And it makes sense: Everything about Bullock indicates she's a capable go-getter and a problem solver

Bullock didn't want to fall into a common Hollywood trap: having a production company and office in name only "There's no point in that," she said of her active Fortis Films. "It's like how some actors have production companies and never produce. What's the point in having it? It doesn't make any sense to me."

She's been nominated and honoured by Hollywood and fans. She's won two Blockbuster Entertainment Awards and two MTV Movie Awards for Speed, as well as a Golden Globe nomination, an American Comedy Awards nomination, two People's Choice Awards and two Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for her role in While You Were Sleeping, and a People's Choice Award and a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for A Time To Kill. In 1996, she was voted NATO/ShoWest "Female Star of the Year"

Many credit her "skyrocket" to fame with bus-riding, bus-driving Annie in 1994's original, highly acclaimed Speed, but she actually built her career starting in 1987 as a bit player

The Washington, D.C., native's birth date is oft disputed - and it's solely this dispute that seems to taint her otherwise model background. It's likely she was born July 26, 1964, given her 1982 Washington-Lee High School grad date.

Bullock's mellifluous voice comes naturally Her father is voice coach John Bullock and her German mother Helga, is an opera singer Bullock cut her teeth early on stage, often participating in the chorus of productions her mother appeared in. Bullock grew up in Arlington, Virginia; Nuremburg, Germany; and Austria (she speaks fluent German).

By the time Bullock hit puberty; she was back in the U.S. In high school, Bullock was one of those rare students able to straddle the fences of cliques. A drama type, she was also a cheerleader (yes, that's her doing the jump splits in Hope Floats). Given her innumerable talents and sunny disposition, she was well suited to the versatility - and social skills - required of Hollywood actresses.

She pursued drama at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. While she didn't graduate, her love of the craft took her to both New York and Los Angeles. She won small roles in movies like 1989's Bionic Showdown, and 1993's The Preppie Murder.

Bullock's first big break was the lead in NBC's short-lived 1990 Working Girl (originally slated for The Facts Of Life's Nancy McKeon). Bullock's sweet disposition was perfect for the gal who got a break.

It set a pattern for Bullock's early career no matter how small her role, or how insignificant the film - she would be a memorable standout.

Working Girl was high-profile enough to catch the eye of casting directors and producers, and Bullock appeared in the miniseries Lucky Chances, then won the lead in Love Potlon No. 9 in 1990.

The movie was significant for her professional and personal life. Not only did she star but it introduced her to Tate Donovan (NBC's Trinity), with whom she had a four-year relationship. Bullock starred as Diane, a mustachioed, thick-browed, animal psychologist in the misguided film loosely based on the classic Leiber-Stoller tune. It wasn't released until two years later, but is often on cable. By then, Bullock had appeared in two forgettable films (Who Do I Gotta Kill? and When The Party's Over).

Then she got her first prestige part starring opposite Robert Duvall and Richard Harris in 1993's Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. "Elaine" characterized roles that eventually brought her to stardom - a compassionate, sensitive and charming young woman.

In 1993's The Thing Called Love, Bullock was aspiring country singer Linda, and appeared opposite other rising young stars: River Phoenix, Samantha Mathis and Dermot Mulroney Top country stars made cameos, and Bullock and Mathis became close off-screen friends.

If it wasn't for what Bullock would later describe as her only nude scene, 1993's Fire On The Amazon (aka Lost Paradise), a direct-tovideo, would easily have been forgotten.

But her significant - and plot-vital - turn in 1993's remake of The Vanishing gave Kiefer Sutherland one of his most powerful moments when he realizes Bullock's "Diane" is missing.

When Lori Petty was ousted, Bullock took over and played sidekick to Sylvester Stallone in 1993's Demolition Man. Bullock was light and captivating, and already informing audiences of her range - the funny, capable. and independent Bullock.

Finally 1994 brought superstardom: Speed. Implausible as a premise, it captured fans of both action and comedy and gave Bullock the cachet to choose films, not to audition, and to command a significant salary.

Audiences embraced her as lovelorn Lucy in 1995's irresistible While You Were Sleeping and as lonely computer nerd Angela in another improbable but engaging movie, The Net.

While Bullock effectively personified Hemingway's muse in 1996's period In Love And War, the movie opted for the reality of the novelist's inexplicable boorishness instead of fictionalizing, and the movie was leaden. Also unpopular was 1996's Two If By Sea - its failure had more to do with Denis Leary's romantic lead credibility than with Bullock.

Bullock took a smaller dramatic role opposite rumored sometime-beau Matthew McConaughey - in 1996's A ~me To Kill. She then turned to directing. She chose the short Making Sandwiches as her directorial debut, which she described at the time as "a very American metaphor of two slices of bread, and whatever you put in between is up to you, and how ritualistic we become in ourselves and our relationships."

Bullock's relationships are gossip fodder since her very public break-up with Donovan (who moved on to Friends' Jennifer Aniston and whom he has since split from) - Bullock has wisely avoided much discussion, but generated much speculation.

The fact that she's settled in Austin, McConaughey's hometown, and wants production facilities there, further fuels the fire. Still, she assures interviewers that the two of them (the prettiest couple in Hollywood, hands down) are simply good friends who love each other and are not in a committed relationship.

Meanwhile, if Miriam's voice in Dreamworks' much-anticipated Prince Of Egypt - opening this month - sounds familiar it's because that's Bullock.

After the fiasco of Speed 2, Bullock captivates in "her" Hope Floats. She also learned what it was like to edit the completed film - and re-edit it to work.

Both in Hope and in Practical Magic, Bullock's Birdee and Sally respectively cope with tremendous losses - yet her performances ring true. "I take what that character's going through and I do an `as if ... what if that happened to me?" she explained. "What if I was in the situation? So it's both. You take what you know and you feel what she knows."

What Bullock knows now is how to pick projects. This fall, she wrapped Forces Of Nature, in which she stars opposite Ben Affleck (Ben) and Maura Tierney (Bridget). 1'he love triangle centers around Ben's journey to marry Bridget. On the trip, he meets Bullock's "Sarah."

Bullock wrapped a week-and-a-half shoot in October of an at-press-time untitled movie (previously Gun Shy) opposite Liam Neeson. The Irish actor plays a DEA agent dealing with his fmal case before retirement. Bullock and her younger sister Gesine, produced the Disney film.

Now Bullock begins her year-long, selfimposed exile from acting - and easily identifiable roles. And undoubtedly fans will miss the prolific actress.

typed out by the webmaster of The Famous Sandra Bullock Page