Axcess 1995

Axcess (1995)

Sandra Bullock sports all the allure of the new girl in school. The one who was beautiful in a friendly sort of funny way. The one who listened to all the advice and then did what she wanted. The one who sat alone in homeroom and was prom queen by the time lunch rolled around- only because the entire student body decided that what she had all along was actually cooler than their slam books and sweater sets. Sandra Bullock is easily the feel-good star for the nineties. She's riding shotgun in a new era of star quality- and there may just be hope for us yet. "Just because you're an actor, it doesn't excuse you from being a good, decent person," she'll exclaim, though this is news to much of Tinseltown. Instead of bringing the glamour of Hollywood to ordinary people, Bullock is bringing the glamour of ordinary people to Hollywood. And she woudn't have it any other way.
"When I was a little kid I would look at the movie screen and think, 'God, I would love to be that woman, but never in a million years will I get close to that.' And now I look at the screen and there are women I can look at and go, 'Okay, that's a little more like me,' or 'That's a lot like me.' I think the more Hollywood portrays human people, the more we'll get used to normal people on film."
So now the wise-cracking gem of such crowd-pleasing fare as Speed and While You Were Sleeping wants us to ponder a bleak and dangerous future where human interaction has incrementally been pushed out of the equation thanks to the monster of all monsters, the big 'ol wolf in sheep's clothing, the innocent until put to deadly uses INTERNET.
In the noirish cyber-thriller The Net, Bullock portrays Angela Bennett, a top computer systems analyst who stumbles across something she never should have seen. Suddenly, weird things start happening. It seems the very technology with which she carved her life is now being used to delete it. And if we believe The Net, we walk away realizing that in a modern society where somputers reach into all corners of daily life, anything from your hotel reservation to your identity can be altered by a few sinister key strokes.

"Once the film is over you leave thinking, 'Oh my God. What's going to happen once I get on-line? What's going to happen if I allow these things to happen?' The Net makes you think really frightening thoughts about the reality of a lot of things," Bullock promises. But she's also aware that the obvious allegorical underpinning (technology=bad, human interaction=good) reeks of the kind of alarmism that accompanies any technological advance.
"I think anytime anything new like this comes out, it's always going to seem a lot more frightening than it's going to end up being. When the telephone was invented, I'm sure people thought we would never speak to each other person-to-person again, but of course we do all the time. You just have to balance it out, like anything."

Bullock is a master of giving the illusion that nothing bothers her. She's completely easygoing. Always cracking jokes. A rock. And she peppers her speech with platitudes like but what can you do? and it's no big deal, which further attest to this enviable attitude. But there is a breaking point, and Bullock's attempts to extend this zen-like attitude to the real fears brewed by The Net are less than convincing.
Though not a method actress, it seems like a little piece of Bennett has yet to leave Bullock's system. "To put yourself in the position that every time you turn the corner you have nobody to turn to and there's nobody to help you and nobody to identify you and say who you are, is really scary. We always have the safeguard of our parents or our friends to say we are who we say we are, but Angela has nobody and she didn't do anything wrong...."

Bullock, who used to "write freely on America On-Line," is clearly shaken. "Even on the internet I've had people track me down, and I'm not under my name. Who am I to think I'm not capable of being found, just because I'm on a piece of machinery?" "So, it's scary. I mean, me, who likes to disappear and not be tracked down- you know every time I pay with a credit card I'm leaving a little trace of where I just went. It's really frightening because the internet allows people who are very much like me, who can so easily get holed up in their house and do nothing, to get more reclusive instead of going out and enjoying the world, which is something we all should do." But "going out and enjoying the world" probably means something different to Bullock than it does to you and me. She no longer has the luxury of going unnoticed. "You can't just roll out of bed and get some milk, 'cause people remember exactly what you wore. So when I walk into the store looking like I just rolled out of bed, the next day I hear about how bad I look."

That was Bullock the movie star speaking. And as the proud owner of a dizzying number of accolades and awards including an MTV Video Award for Most Desirable, a charisma saturated screen presence that commands well above the million mark, and an adoring public, she has every right to assume this role. But Bullock the Ordinary Person keeps stepping on her lines. "But these things are no big deal, really," she quickly adds.
But Bullock is a big deal, really. And her tale, like the celluloid values she represents, smacks of the kind of gritty success story that brings a wistful tear to the eye and an innane muttering, like, "Golly, it couldn't have happened to a better person," to the lips.

Sandra and her younger sister Gesine spent much of their childhood traveling back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Germany with their mother, a German opera singer, and their father, a vocal teacher. They never had much of a chance to grow roots in either country. It wasn't until Sandra finally held still for a few years at East Carolina University in North Carolina that was bitten by the acting bug. After college she chased her dream to New York, where she waited tables (my "second love," she reveals) before finally moving to Los Angeles.
After a number of obscure projects (including the TV series based on the Melanie Griffith movie Working Girl), Bullock gained a glimmer of recognition for her role opposite Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man, and a spot on all the "Hot Lists" with her turn as a cuter-than-thou bus driver in Speed. But it was her next role that granted heat to her light- that of Lucy Moderatz in the heart-warming While You Were Sleeping. "(While You Were Sleeping) was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities.
There was so much of me in that film. That's about as close to me as you'll get, or I'm going to allow myself to get," she says of the role for which she turned down the chance to star in Batman Forever.

Bullock keeps the kind of hectic work schedule that would put any self-respecting go-getter to shame. Right now she's lounging in her Los Angeles home decked out in men's pajamas and a T-shirt "from like 1970," but this morning she was in San Francisco reshooting the end to The Net. "It had a very 'tie up all those loose ends' ending which was boring and didn't really leave anybody any room to think," she explains. "This way I think we leave it a lot more open."
Mere days before, she was in Nova Scotia, trading ad-libs with Denis Leary and wrapping the dark comedy Two If By Sea. "Even though you were dead tired, you didn't mind getting up for work and driving 40 minutes through nowhere to get to where you were going- because the whole rest of the day you had no idea what was going to happen," she says of her time in Nova Scotia. "I spent 2 solid months laughing and it went pretty quick."

As for the future......that's pretty much booked too. Hollywood is a town where most people can't even get lunch reservations, yet Bullock has managed to rack up enough movie deals to sail her gracefully into her golden years, no doubt with the public in tow.
"My upcoming plan is to chill on a beach in Mexico and do nothing," Bullock laughs, before launching into the secong leg of her victory schedule. "And then I have to start researching for my next film. I'm going to hire my sister. I play a law student, and my sister's in that exact place right now, so basically I'm paying my sister this summer for me to do her dirty work." Then comes double billing as actor/producer in Kate and Leopold, a script written by a friend of hers and currently being rewritten by Carrie Fisher. It's clear Bullock has a deep-seated need to work hard and often. "I'm so anal about achieving and always going forward, that if I slack, I miss a beat and not achieve what I set out to do. I was the same way when I lived in New York.
I could have gone out and partied after I got done waitressing, but I went home and went to bed because I had to pound the pavement the next day. I have to do everything yesterday. It's like I have an agenda, an internal time clock that says I have to get everything done by tomorrow, achieve everything tomorrow. I just started this year really learning how to relax and live and enjoy what I've earned and not be afraid to go, 'Okay, I've worked really hard and now it's okay to go to Mexico for a week and a half and just relax.' " This is the Bullock behind the persona- the overachiever who uses one hand to keep a firm grip on the real world and the other to slap herself in the face if she ever forgets it.
"Some people, I don't know what happens, they abandon the old and go for the new and the new will abandon them and go on to the next new thing and then they are left there all by themselves. And who wants that? I have the same people in my life that I had in the beginning with me and I have no intention of dumping everyone that helped me get to where I am because I woudn't be here if it wasn't for them."
Bullock, who was out of the country when Speed hit, espouses enough pearls of wisdom to fill a volume of Life's Little Instruction Book for Hot Actresses, yet still finds fame a bit sudden.

"Nobody could ever possibly tell you to be prepared for this if it happens. You have a lifestyle and it changes almost overnight.....you come back and you just walk out of your house and it's almost like you feel a vibe that has completely changed your level of living. And it's the weirdest thing. You almost have to go, 'Okay, am I going to continue living the way I like to live?' - which is my answer. I'm not going to curb what I say, which might be taken the wrong way by people. I'm not going to stop being the way that I am. I can't change, or then I'd be a completely different person that I can't control. I've learned to deal with it slowly the past couple months, and it's been very, very bizarre, very strange." She talks a good game, but the chances that Bullock, whose biggest pet peeve is "those people that say, 'No no no, I'm not going to order any dessert,' and then eat half of yours" will say something that gets taken the wrong way are slim to none.
"I'll never say anything really malicious or that hurts other people. I'm really careful about it because I know how easily my feelings get hurt, so I take other people's feelings into consideration big time," Bullock says with conviction. And in a town where people flash words like money, for some reason, hers ring true.