Caribbean World (July 97)

With her big brown eyes and wide grin, Sandra Bullock has captured Hollywood's heart. She first swung into top gear as the sexy bus-driver in the runaway bomb thriller Speed. The action-packed sequel, set on the high seas of the Caribbean, is on its way.
Seven years ago, Bullock was just another Hollywood waitress with stars in her eyes, earning $4.50 an hour flashing that supersonic smile behind a cocktail bar. She now rakes in more than $10 million a movie, which puts her firmly at the top of the megabucks tree, alongside Julia Roberts, Demi Moore, and Meg Ryan.
But what is most amazing is that everybody still loves her. Directors, co-stars and hardnosed hacks just can't find a nasty word to say about Bullock. There hasn't even been as much as a squeak from Julia Roberts, who could be forgiven for spitting nails over a stream of reports that she's been upstaged by Bullock. Hollywood's new heroine even scooped the dubious "Most Wanted" title from American magazine Celebrity Skins, as the babe most men wanted to see nude. But while working in the Caribbean recently, there was no way this would happen as photographers were warned they'd be arrested if they took to the air to get shots of her skinny-dipping.
On set there have been no temper tantrums or prima donna-style demands- Bullock is wise enough to win allies by being unfailingly polite and professional. As one seasoned showbiz writer remarked: "I have rarely seen more people willing to do things for one actress, unasked, and being grateful to be involved." Yet another spellbound reporter described her as "Really, really REAL."

Sandra Annette Bullock was born on July 26th, 1965, in Arlington, Virginia- the eldest daughter of an American voice coach father and a German opera singing mother. The family lived in Germany for a while and Bullock's mother Helga took the stage-struck youngster on the road with her. "There is a dirty gypsy child in every opera, and that was me," explains Bullock. "My mother used to tell me: 'Make your own way, because what if you are married to someone and all of a sudden he dies?' " Her mother also told her: "You don't need a man to get you where you want to go. Make your own money and get your own career."
But despite this early professional experience, when the family finally settled back in Virginia, 12-year-old Bullock had a tough time adjusting to the peer-group pressures of American high school. "The only way I could conform in America was to not be smart," she recalls. It wasn't until she became a cheerleader that Bullock really made the grade, but it still didn't feel right: "Everybody who had never spoken to me before was suddenly a really good friend of mine. It was sad," says the star.
She then chose to study drama at the low-key East Carolina University, rather than entering her father's old New York college, Juilliard, as her parents wished. "I knew I just wasn't ready for that," she says. But when Bullock finally made the move to the Big Apple, before graduating, she soon collected a series of good reviews for off-Broadway plays.
The blossoming actress also spent a lot of time serving drinks- a period she now looks back on with a suspicious amount of enthusiasm: "I had done everything, the worst being coat-checking where people were coming in from the rain and handing me wet 600-pound furs. To move up to hostessing was like being liberated. Then I got to cocktail waitressing and that was where I was in my glory. My days waiting tables in New York were the best."
Next came the inevitable move to Los Angeles. Over the next few years she appeared in various TV series and films, including The Preppie Murder, alongside the then equally anonymous William Baldwin. But in 1993 things started to heat up when she made a brief appearance in The Vanishing, alongside Jeff Bridges and Keifer Sutherland.
In the same year Bullock got her big break as a last-minute substitution on the futuristic cryogenics thriller Demolition Man. Her perky performance as the main squeeze of Sly Stallone's defrosted sci-fi cop was strong enough to attract attention from Speed director Jan de Bont. Since then she has never looked back.
Bullock's professional triumphs have made many headlines over the past couple of years, but her personal life remains largely under wraps. She lives in L.A. with her younger sister Gesine, a law student, and has a close circle of loyal family and friends, some of whom work for her production company, Fortis Films.
Rather than indulging in film-set flings, Bullock tends to turn her leading men into her best buddies. In fact, the only time the gossip-mongers have really got to her was when the British tabloids pictured her dancing in London's nightclub Stringfellow's with Chris O'Donnell, her love interest in the forthcoming film In Love and War. "I was mortified," says Bullock. "Chris is getting married, and to insinuate that the two of us were having a thing together was awful." She has since learnt to laugh it off: "We call it the 'Canoodling Incident'."

She and O'Donnell, who played Robin in Batman, did find a soul mate in each other, however. "The greatest thing about Chris is that he has no brain sieve. He doesn't know the meaning of curbing what he says. That's why I adore him," says Bullock. When they met, both were struggling to deal with the pressures of instant fame. "We both did this film for the same reasons, in the sense that we both had to grow. We wanted to be challenged," she explains.
But there is certainly a sexual chemistry between the two on screen. In Love and War, directed by Richard Attenborough, tells the poignant true story of Ernest Hemingway's first and doomed love affair with a Red Cross nurse he met in Italy during the First World War. Hemingway, played by O'Donnell, was 19 when he met Agnes von Kurowsky (Bullock's character).
"It was one of those things in your life," says Bullock. "I think they both deserved each other, but it was unfortunate timing. Everyone has one of those times where it didn't happen, but it's the one you remember most fondly. The memories are painful and romantic and left in this ethereal place, rather than based in reality."
Bullock, now 32, has some painful memories of her own in the romantic area. She spent 4 years with actor Tate Donovan, whom she met on the set of her early film, Love Potion No. 9. But the relationship ended in 1994, just as Bullock hit the big-time with Speed. It took her a long time to recover from the split. "I gave Tate my life," she has said. "I put so much effort into trying to convince him that I was great for him. We had 4 terrific years together before my work took over, and suddenly he was no longer there. I cried buckets."
Her next serious relationship was with Don Padilla, a crew member on the 1995 computer thriller The Net. But the gap between the humble grip earning a couple of hundred pounds a week and the golden girl on $12.5 million finally proved too much. "I was never at home," admits Bullock. "The whole experience was wrong for him. Although it wasn't really my fault, I felt incredibly responsible that such a great person was watching his life change for the worse, so I said that maybe it was best that I just back off and give him some peace. If we come back together and things are different, then that would be really wonderful."
Bullock is obviously saddened by this unexpected side-effect of fame: "Relationships are what disappear the fastest. I don't know whether it is the money or the circumstances."

The current state of Bulock's romantic life is a closely guarded secret. Suffice it to say that it doesn't involve O'Donnell, nor for that matter another of Bullock's chisel-jawed co-stars, Matthew McConaughey, from the 1996 courtroom thriller A Time to Kill. "Matthew and I co-produced a little film together for our own entertainment, called Making Sandwiches," she reveals. "He is a great guy, but we didn't have a thing going on.
"When I am with Matthew I feel so relaxed and at home, but I know that he is going to go through many, many women.....Several nights a week we'd go out to a blues bar to drink and dance until closing time. I love to go out dancing, and am totally and utterly addicted to salsa."
This "little film", which Bullock wrote and directed herself, ended up being entered into the Sundance Film Festival. "It's very simple and sardonic and metaphorical," she explains. "It's about a couple who run a sandwich shop. They have been together all their lives and all they know is their ritual of making sandwiches. And then something infiltrates their store and shifts one of them into growing, and the other one is threatened because the rituals are broken."
Bullock says she got the idea for the film while on location in the deep South of America for A Time to Kill. "When I was in Mississippi I had a lot of time on my hands, and when I got home I wrote it in two days because it had been sitting in my head."
A Time to Kill is based on the book by John Grisham, who also wrote The Firm and The Pelican Brief. It tells the story of a young white lawyer named Jake Brigance, played by McConaughey, who confronts the racial tensions. "I did A Time to Kill because the subject matter is something that needs to be adressed," says Bullock.
Bullock plays serious but sassy law student Ellen Roark, who is assisting on the case. "I had such an incredible experience on this picture," she recalls with warmth. "Making this movie had an incredible effect on us all, so I think the friendships I have developed will last a lifetime."
McConaughey, described by Grisham as "a combination of a young Paul Newman and a young Marlon Brando", agrees: "She is a wonderful friend. She has really helped me adjust to being famous...we talk on the phone constantly."
The character Bullock feels is the closest to her own in the films she has made to date is the lovesick Lucy in the 1995 hit romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping, which grossed $81 million in America alone. Lucy, who works in a New York railway ticket booth, fantasises about escaping from her humdrum existence. One day she saves the man of her dreams after he falls on to the train track. While he lies in a coma, she masquerades as his fiancee, bringing both joy and confusion to his family.
"I chose While You Were Sleeping because I could identify with Lucy," says Bullock. "She is normal. She's so normal that I wore my own wardrobe for the film. It is the closest that you will see to me. I choose roles that fit in with what's going on in my life, where I am at," she admits. "I use it like therapy, I guess. I won't do it unless I can do it honestly."

If that's the case, Bullock is obviously feeling on top of the world at the moment. Next to roll off the production line is Speed 2: Cruise Control, due out in July. Bullock says that this project came along just at the right time: "After A Time to Kill and In Love and War I needed something physical and insane and fun- it was like working out."
This time the action takes place at sea- the bomb-on-a-bus plot of the first movie is transferred to a giant hijacked liner which is cruising the Caribbean off the sun-drenched island of St Martin. And the star promises that it is set to outdo the original film: "We fight and do things on a daily basis that you have never seen done in your life," she says. "When you see us underwater with the boat flying over our head, it is really us!"
This time around Keanu Reeves has been replaced by the equally ship-shape Jason Patric, while the villain is played by Willem Dafoe, the war veteran in the smash hit The English Patient.
The film certainly features scorching special effects, including the climactic scene where the mammoth vessel smashes into the island's docks, searing a bell tower and sending terrified locals running for their lives. The spectacular stunt involved building a life-size model and guiding it into position with hidden rails.
Bullock had her fair share of excitement off the set as well- in one unwelcome incident a drifter tried to grab her on the streets of the island's capital, while in another untimely episode sexy Sandra was left red-cheeked when she dropped her pants and mooned at a cruise ship which was packed with Speed 2 film crew and extras playing passengers. What was meant as a practical joke turned into every actor's nightmare when Bullock saw somebody on the deck of the liner was filming her.
The panic-stricken actress immediately brought her speedboat alongside the ship and boarded it so she could view the footage. "The cameraman had really zoomed in on my backside," says Bullock, who remains good-humoured about the incident. "All I can say is I'm glad I have been working out." She has since been assured that the footage would not be making its way into the hands of the press.
Far more terifying was a stunt that went dangerously wrong when a propellor flew out of control and hurtled towards Sandra's head. The actress was saved from certain death by a quick-thinking crew member. "It was going to cut my head off- there was no doubt about it," she recalls. "The guy saved me. So much came very close to going wrong." Following this marine marathon, Bullock's plan was to make something "small and independent and character-driven". But that was before she was offered the plum role of Lois Lane in the new $80 million Superman movie, Superman Lives. With Oscar winner Nicholas Cage set to play the 'Man of Steel' and Jack Nicholson tipped to appear as Superman's arch enemy Lex Luther, it seems that sweet Sandy's winning smile can only get wider.

© 1997 by Carribean World