Hollywood Online May 1998

Hollywood Online (May 98)

Sandra Bullock Learns Her Lessons

While Sandra Bullock may have been America's sweetheart after the successes of her films "Speed" and "While You Were Sleeping," she knows that she fell out of favor with later disappointments like "Speed 2," "In Love And War" and "Two If By Sea."

A bubbly optimist, Bullock has learned from her negative experiences. She has started producing her own films, investing her blood, sweat and tears in her latest effort, the mid-priced moving back to the nest drama, "Hope Floats," which opens May 29.

Bullock still remembers the pain of going down with the ship on "Speed 2," but personally she recalls the actual filming as great fun.

"`Speed 2' was, by far, the best life experience I have ever had with some of my best friends, for a six-month period of time. We did things you never get to do in life. So the trade-off is, my life is better because of it, but my career took a big nose dive. My career came to a halt, which actually was the best thing for it.

"I like the producing right now a great deal more than I do the acting," she adds. "I'm better at producing right now, because I have more to give in that department. A lot of it is administrative, damage control, creative thinking. There's a sense of panic, as if one thing falling out could make the whole thing fall apart. I get a rush from that."

Making movies is a series of lessons learned for Bullock, starting near the beginning, with "Love Potion No. 9." On that one the lesson was never wear fake teeth. "They made my teeth crooked," she grimaces.

"Another lesson is to learn to say `NO!' `No' should be the strongest word in your vocabulary, and I learned that from Jason Patric, who kicked my butt for years until I learned how to say the word `no' at work. He told me that my work was bad because I allowed them to make it bad.

"A third lesson I've learned is to never watch films on video. Watch a film on screen, because films are not made for video. Films are made for subtle, small nuances. The touch of a hand, the shifting of an eye which sends the entire scene in a different direction. But if your TV screen is distorted and you're watching a third generation copy video, you don't see that look, and you don't know why the scene all of a sudden went that way."

Along the road to stardom, Bullock got turned off to movies in general. Only recently has she begun to rediscover her love of the art of film.

"I realized that I hadn't been to movies in a year, because I was so turned off by them and I wasn't enjoying them," she admits. "Now I'm going to everything. I'm watching every film, and I even love bad television. I love bad cable at three in the morning, because I want to find out why it's bad. If you only see good movies, you have nothing to compare them to."

Her favorite lessons come from her peers. "I love watching people's performances," she concludes. "I just watched `To Die For' again and Nicole [Kidman] is so good, she's so bloody good, it makes me sick. I'm just so pissed at her! But it's great to see performances like that, because it invigorates me. It makes me want to try harder."