Sandra Bullock is known as one of the nicest people in Hollywood, something that wouldn’t surprise anyone who has seen her in one of her many charming romantic comedies. Since her star-making turn alongside Keanu Reeves in the thrill-a-minute actioner “Speed,” Bullock has been an A-list star and a consistent box office draw.
Bullock is the daughter of famed German opera singer Helga Meyer and John Bullock, a vocal coach and Pentagon contractor. Though born on July 26, 1964 in Arlington, Virginia, Bullock grew up mostly in Nuremberg, Germany, where she sang in a children’s opera choir, studied voice and ballet, and traveled with her mother on her singing tours. Upon her family’s return to the United States, Bullock graduated from Washington-Lee High School before attending East Carolina University. Though she eventually received a bachelor’s degree, she left for a Hollywood acting career shortly before finishing.
Her first role was a lead part in the 1987 B-movie “Hangmen,” and in 1990 she was cast in the lead role of the short-lived TV spin-off of the popular Melanie Griffith comedy “Working Girl”. The show barely made it through a half season, and for three more years Bullock continued to struggle with finding breakthrough roles, despite leads in relatively high-profile films like “Love Potion No. 9” (alongside then-boyfriend Tate Donovan) and the Kiefer Sutherland-starring thriller “The Vanishing,” both of which were busts at the box office. Her break came with the 1993 Sylvester Stallone-Wesley Snipes match-up “Demolition Man” – a mostly unremarkable film that sported Bullock glowing as a butt-whooping sidekick. She was subsequently cast in “Speed,” a rousing action film that made her and co-star Keanu Reeves huge stars. Soon she was headlining a string of major films, including “While You Were Sleeping,” “The Net,” and the John Grisham adaptation “A Time To Kill,” which co-starred Matthew McConaughey and a superb Samuel L. Jackson.
After the colossal failure of “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” Bullock embarked on a long string of successful romantic comedies that paired her with the most popular leading men of the late 90s, from “Forces of Nature” with Ben Affleck to “Two Weeks Notice” with Hugh Grant. Her most amusing films of the period were the fish-out-of-water comedy “Miss Congeniality” (which spawned a sequel) and the comedy “Practical Magic,” which featured an impressive cast including Nicole Kidman and Stockard Channing. Recently Bullock has starred in “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” “Murder by Numbers,” “Infamous,” and “The Lake House.” She received wide acclaim for her supporting role in the Best Picture Oscar winner “Crash.”
Bullock continues to be one of Hollywood’s greatest and most charitable leading ladies. In 2007 audiences can see her starring with Julian McMahon in the supernatural thriller “Premonition.”