Empire Magazine (October 1995)

. . . And All Things Nice

She took Keanu for a ride in Speed and the world sat up and took notice. Now, after the enormous Stateside success of While You Were Sleeping, Sandra Bullock is being called "the next big thing, the girl most likely to, the next Julia Roberts".

Mark Salisbury meets probably the nicest actress in the world . . .

At HIGH SCHOOL, SANDRA BULLOCK WAS voted "the girl most likely to brighten up your day". They certainly got that one right, even if they were way off the mark about her being "the most likely to get married to her high school boyfriend". In the flesh, as on screen, Bullock is as sweet-natured, ebullient, and as thoroughly wholesome as they come. She bounces up to you, and introduces herself with a firm shake of hand and a "Hi, I'm Sandy" greeting that endears you to her immediately. She has a chirpy girl-next-door quality, one that has, in no small way, aided her rise to the top. The word nice could have been invented just for her.

"I think 'brighten up your day' is a little nicer than 'most likely to succeed'," she reflects, "because there's not as much pressure that goes along with that. You don't have to work on Wall Street and become a multi-millionaire, you can just crack a joke and you live up to your title."

A year ago, when we first met, Bullock was "the girl from Speed", catapulted to stardom on the strength of the way she drove a bus over a 50 foot gap in an LA freeway and the ease at which she delivered a quip. Speed might have set Keanu up as the next action hero, but it was Bullock's performance as the plucky, headstrong commuter who stole the show. Now, following the success of the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping, in which she stars as a lonely ticket collector torn between a comatose Peter Gallagher and his wide awake brother (played by Bill Pullman), Bullock is being talked about as the next big thing, the girl most likely to, the next Julia Roberts. "It's just a reference point," she says, dismissively. Nevertheless, she acknowledges a huge debt to the Pretty Woman star.

"Julia broke the mould for us actresses who weren't the conventional leading ladies," she admits. "She was just raw and natural and she wasn't perfect but she was beautiful and tomboyish. It was great to see. Most actresses who were like myself said, 'Thank God, here's finally somebody that's gained recognition for not being perfect and the glamourpuss.' It took a lot of pressure off."

But fame sometimes has a heavy price. With Roberts, the media pounced and her turbulent personal life became regular tabloid fodder. Bullock is ready for it.

"When she hit big, everybody wanted a piece of her and wanted to know about her - how do you expect to handle that? I would never have been able to handle it like she did. I think I would have dropped out. I would have stopped. But she took a vacation, she hung in there and she did exactly what she needed to do, and I think she's incredibly strong for it. She also showed me what to be wary of."

Fundamentally, her privacy. "I've always been that way, overly private. It's a joke amongst my friends. But that's just the way I am. 'What's in your closet?' 'Why?' I always feel there's an ulterior motive to things. I'm very guarded.

"But you learn very quickly. I've been very fortunate in the sense that there's not really much that could be said that could be really hurtful, except for things you hear in speculation, but that's exactly what it is. I could play into it and go, 'It's not true, I'm not seeing the King of England.' But things like that are funny, and I'm trying to look at them as humorous. This is a period of my life where if I don't enjoy this, it'll be my demise. So I'll just enjoy it, let it roll off my back and frame all the really good ones for my 'speculation wall'."

There will come a time, I suggest, when the term "the next Sandra Bullock" will be bandied about to describe some up-and-coming actress.

"That's kind of cool," she hoots. "A girlfriend of mine who was working in a studio office said they had lists of the type of actor they want for each role," she chuckles, "like, 'We want a Sandra Bullock type.' Just out of curiosity she said, 'What type is that?' and they said, 'You know, kind of offbeat, not too pretty, kind of funny, could be a leading lady, ugly duckling.' " Bullock laughs. "She came back and said 'Apparently this is who you are right now', and I said, 'That makes sense.' I think it's very flattering. It's nice."

Sandra Bullock was in Europe, on a publicity tour for Speed, when the film opened big in America and the world suddenly wanted to know: who's that girl?

"I missed that hoopla," she recalls. "I'm glad I did. And then I started working the minute I got back, so I never had to pay any attention to anything that was different, except the fact that I was working again."

Two weeks ago she finally stopped, having filmed, back-to-back, While You Were Sleeping, The Net (in which she stars as a computer whizz terrorised by cyberhackers) and Two If By Sea (a comedy with Denis Leary), and the realisation began to dawn on her that life would never quite be the same again.

"It's a little uncomfortable. But it's only uncomfortable because I'm not used to it. I don't know what it's about because it's nothing within my control, it's just this little animal that's been created on its own. One side of it is something I don't really enjoy, the other side is just the fact I get to work all the time. That's really nice, where you don't have to audition, they just kind of go, 'We'd like you to do this', and you go, 'Okay.'"

What specific differences has she noticed?

"It's the weirdest thing. I stepped off the plane from Nova Scotia where I was for two-and-a-half months, and not only did people look at me and go, 'She looks familiar, she's the girl from Speed,' but the look on their faces . . . I wanted to go up to them: 'What? What's the matter?' People treat you a little differently, in an odd way they're a little more standoff-ish, they almost kind of regard you as a freak. It's very odd. You walk down the street and you get that look and you feel like a leper."

SANDRA'S MOTHER, HELGA, WAS A GERMAN OPERA SINGER. Her father, John, a voice coach from Alabama. She grew up in Washington but first appeared on stage in Europe, aged eight, where her mother was touring the opera houses. "I was usually the straggly gypsy child to the side of the stage. It was nice. It was a babysitting service for my mom. But even at a very young age you kind of see what really goes on."

Bullock was, she admits, a difficult child - "My mother realised that to get me to do something was to tell me not to do it, and to not get me to do it was to tell me to do it. I'm psychologically dyslexic" - something her earliest memory substantiates. "We'd just moved into a house and I was like three and my father put a lightbulb down and said, 'Don't touch it.' I went 'Ay-aarrrr', karate chopped it, and sliced open my hand. From then on my parents knew I was a difficult child. I gave them much trouble and many grey hairs."

Ask Bullock why she acts and she'll tell you she has no idea. But eventually she will concede that "it's the only thing I have the energy to do. I get bored very very easily, and it's challenging, you're always on this tightrope, one false move and you can either completely destroy a role or your career or a character or a moment in a film and it's a nice challenge. I love challenges, I like competitions, I love being forced to do something that I didn't do the day before or thought I couldn't do."

She graduated from the University of East Carolina in 1988 and headed for New York City, spiritual home of all struggling artistes. She had a plan: she would study acting and, in the meantime, she would waitress. "If you were an actor, a serious actor, you went to New York and you studied," she recalls. "And you learn in a relatively short time how you're supposed to do things. You work at night, you pound the pavement, you go through these certain papers and you audition for really horrible little projects. You wanna learn about film, you do student films, you do horrible films."

But New York was where it was at. Los Angeles and the movies never entered her thinking. "Never in a million years I thought I'd go to LA, I was so adamant about not going. But then I had a really bad TV job, and I met someone and I followed them out there. They were like, 'You've got to come out,' and I was like (Adopts bimbo voice) 'Okay.' I went for a week and got a job but I never would have gone on my own."

That "bad TV job" was the small screen series of the hit movie Working Girl in which Bullock played the Melanie Griffith part. "It was the most difficult time of my life," she insists. "I had no idea why I was doing a TV role, I had just done like these New York films and it was about creating and working for the moment, and here I was working in commercial television. I was the straight girl in a comedy and I was miserable." The torture lasted a total of 13 episodes. "I shouldn't have been in that show."

Her first movie job in LA was The Preppie Murder, which also featured Billy Baldwin and Lara Flynn Boyle. "I had maybe four scenes, if you blinked I was gone, but it was great. It was my first Hollywood thing, and it was very scary. There were a lot of beautiful young women and I was like in the corner going, 'Oh my God.' But the $1,200 I made on it enabled me to stay another three months and get more work."

These included a number of direct-to-video quickies with titles such as Religion Inc. and Who Shot Patakango?, films you'd be hard pressed to find in any movie reference book. Then there was Fire On The Amazon, the Roger Corman-produced jungle adventure directed by Luis Losa (Sniper, The Specialist).

"It was the most eye-opening and lifechanging experience I've ever had," she bubbles. "I cannot tell you what it was like to be at the mouth of the Amazon. I played with cheetahs, I was in the water, I was sick, I thought I was going to die. Everyday I'm trying to go out and try something new, open my mind, meet new people, and not retreat into the comforts of my cocoon which I could easily. It really taught me a great lesson. Everybody's done a Corman film, it's kind of your gateway into the industry, but it gave me my outlook on life."

The film required a love scene - her first - and she was determined to show as much as she wanted to show, i.e. nothing. "I had them type out what I could not show, just to have it in legalities, like that helps, but we were in the Amazon for crying out loud, and we had to be intertwined. But they were like, 'We're not going to show anything,' and I thought, 'I'll just make sure.' "So as a precaution, she covered her nipples with gaffer tape. "I didn't realise that I was eventually going to have to take it off . . ." she laughs. "But nothing showed. I made sure of that."

Gradually, the work got bigger, and better. She was cast as Kiefer Sutherland's missing girlfriend in the US remake of The Vanishing. She was only onscreen for 20 minutes, but it was a pivotal role in a studio film. Then, one Friday in 1992, something miraculous happened. Within two hours she walked off with the part of an aspiring Country & Western singer opposite River Phoenix in Peter Bogdanovich's Nashville-set The Thing Called Love and that of a waitress in Randa Haines' melancholic Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, starring Robert Duvall and Richard Harris.

To get that role in Ernest Hemingway meant going to work and knowing that all my friends who I went to acting school with were going to hate me so much." She cackles wildly. "That was one of the biggest thrills in the acting world, that was a great coup."

While both films were character-based pieces which allowed her the opportunity to act, neither were going to set the box of fire alight. Action movie supremo Joel Silver had seen her in The Vanishing and brought her in to replace Lori Petty who had been fired after just two days' work on Demolition Man. It was a big movie. And it starred Sylvester Stallone.

"It was overwhelmingly huge, I was petrified, I had gotten off Ernest Hemingway four days previously, this wonderfully creative, artistic, beautiful film, and I remember sitting down in Joel Silver's office and Joel going, 'Do you want to do this film?' I remember going, 'I would like to do it, but I would love to talk about the character,' and it was almost like I had said the biggest joke. Within an hour I was standing next to Sylvester Stallone not knowing what to say, and it was like, 'So, nice tan, do you golf?' I didn't know what to do. And the thing that I resort to is humour. If somebody has a sense of humour I'll be fine with them."

For Speed, first-time director Jan De Bont was looking for a "real" person not a "beautiful face" to drive the bus. The studio balked at Bullock, but De Bont fought for her. And won. After Demolition Man she was wary of another action movie, but she liked the people.

"I thought, 'Do it for the fun of it, nobody expects anything from it and it'll just be nice.' Because it was an action film I was bracing myself for the reviews. But you know what? Live and learn. I was shocked and overwhelmed when they started coming in, I couldn't believe they would say these nice things - especially about a film that sets itself up to be highly criticised. It just proves you never ever know."

Following Speed, her star was truly in the ascent, and everybody wanted a piece. Joel Schumacher tried to cast her as the Dark Knight's love interest in Batman Forever, but she had already signed on to do While You Were Sleeping, a script she had long treasured, and one originally earmarked for Demi Moore. Bullock's character in Sleeping is again another nice, wholesome young lady. Would she ever want to play someone altogether darker?

"Absolutely, if it's written well. Everything I do seems to reflect where I seem to be, at that time. As you grow, you deal with different issues in your life and that you can apply honestly to your work. So if there comes a role that's really well written that way and has a great reason for being that way - not just to be the freak seductress who kills people for that reason - absolutely. I wouldn't think twice. The last two films I did kind of veer away from the sweetness and deal with different issues and that's only because I felt I could do that. It just depends on where I am at the time."

Indeed, when filming started on While You Were Sleeping, Bullock was coming to terms with the break-up of a four-year relationship with Tate Donovan with whom she co-starred in the forgettable Love Potion No. 9. "Being lonely is something that everybody feels, and at the time I made the film, I had spent a whole year by myself. I knew how to apply that to the work. I knew what it meant not having anybody in your life."

BULLOCK'S THREE OBSESSIONS ARE, IN NO PARTICULAR order: rock climbing, dancing the salsa, and Welsh crooner Tom Jones. "My parents couldn't figure it out either," she laughs. "Ever since I was a child I've loved Tom Jones. It's his charisma. It transcends all age groups." Has she met him? "He sat three rows behind me at the MTV Music Awards and I didn't have the nerve to go up to him. But it's something that's been around all my life, so I don't know if I really want to meet him. I think I want to go to Las Vegas, stay in a hotel and see Tom Jones sing. A girlfriend of mine, when she was 15, it was her birthday, he pulled her on stage and gave her a kiss, and that's why she's my idol."

Couldn't you just call him up?

"I don't want to, I'd much rather just like him the way I like him now instead. I think if I met him I couldn't go on with this sort of thing that I have. So I'll admire him from afar."

As for the future, she's not exactly sure. She's signed on for A Time To Kill. But after that? "By the end of this year I will have done everything that I wanted to do in terms of every part," she sighs. "What do I do? I'll take a long break, I'll do something else. I'll leave for a year and go travel. I don't know, I'll probably have nothing to offer until I go off and experience something else."

For now, however, our time together is up. She has more people to see, more people to be nice to.

Same time next year?

"Next time," she fires back, "we'll do it at your house."

Sandra Bullock. What a sweetie . . .

While You Were Sleeping is released nationwide on September 1 and was reviewed last issue.

© 1995 by Empa Metro