What Did Sandra Bullock Ever See in Jesse James?

The more I hear about Jesse James, the more I wonder: What in creation did Sandra Bullock ever see in him? Didn't she see the same warning signs we all saw?

—Lovey, Austin, via the Answer B!tch inbox

Well, if she did, Sandra Bullock didn't exactly share them with the planet.

Long before Michelle "Bombshell" McGee blasted what appears to be an irreparable hole in their marriage, Jesse James and Bullock were celebrated by the media as an "unlikely" couple.

But if you dig deeper, you'll see that these two had more in common than you may think, including a few similarities that may surprise you...

Early in her relationship with James, Bullock wouldn't talk about the budding romance, instead telling People magazine that she wanted stories on her to focus on her work. "There's a reason they call it private life," she quipped.

But that eventually changed. Here's what she apparently saw in James, as well as some interesting commonalities:

• James, apparently, didn't try to remake Bullock or criticize her faults. "Thankfully I married someone who loves me just the way I am—and all the nuttiness that goes into me," Bullock told In Style.

• He made her reconsider her stance on kids. Again, per Bullock in In Style: "I haven't had children biologically. I had shut that off; then I met Jesse, and it turned on again. I was like, 'Oh, that's that feeling.' "

• He made her feel like she could let her guard down. "He takes care of her, which was really hard for her at first," Ann Lopez, wife of Bullock bud George Lopez, said in an interview. "She's so independent. Then here comes Mr. Macho: strong and yet sensitive, artistic, a businessman and all around a cool dude. I have never seen her so happy."

• They actually both like driving really fast on vehicles with wheels. Bullock loves to go off-roading on dirt bikes and cussing a lot. She once said, "I want to be a broad."

• James isn't the only one who seems very conscious of, um, race. Addressing a question about future children, Bullock told People, "If that's gonna happen, that's exactly the way things are supposed to be, and it would be amazing. And if it didn't happen, then I'd know that I was supposed to be right here with these three amazing, blond Aryan children. Everyone looks at me and goes, 'I know you ain't the mama!' I'm like, 'That's OK, I can put in some blond highlights!' "

• James himself isn't all guns and choppers. He admires Martha Stewart, for one. And they both consider themselves very stubborn.

• Most tellingly, Bullock seems to have believed that James's past was just that: his past. While shooting the film Premonition in a Shreveport, La., church, Bullock reportedly told the pastor, "He's gotten over the wildness and I'm the wild one now!"

Sandra Bullock: "If I Had a Second Adopted Child, Everyone Would Be Hearing About It"

The only new addition to Sandra Bullock’s house is her hunky new boyfriend, Bryan Randall! Despite reports to the contrary, the Oscar-winning actress, 51, has not adopted a second child.

While speaking to the Associated Press about her upcoming film, Our Brand Is Crisis, Bullock put an end to the speculation.

Sandra Bullock arrives at the 19th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards in 2014. Gregg DeGuire/WireImage

“There’s only one adopted child in my household and his name is Louis,” she said of her 5-year-old son. “If I had a second adopted child, everyone would be hearing about it. I would be loud and clear. And say, ‘Yes, I have officially adopted a second child.’ Right now, Louis must be it.”

Bullock officially adopted Louis in 2010 shortly after her painful split from  her then-husband, Jesse James. Biker James, 46, recently spoke about the divorce and not getting to be a part of Louis’ life, telling In Depth With Graham Bensinger, “The painful part was about Louis, who we adopted.”

Louis Bullock poses at his mom's Hand and Footprint Ceremony at TCL Chinese Theatre in 2013. Gregg DeGuire/WireImage

She has been open about raising her little boy as a single mother, recently talking about teaching Louis about racism.

“He fully understands what that means,” she told BET. “He doesn’t understand why people judge each other based on the color of their skin, but he knows they do. He also knows there’s sexism, he knows that there’s homophobia.”

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Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock, in full Sandra Annette Bullock   (born July 26, 1964, Arlington,Virginia, U.S.), American actress and film producer known for her charismatic energy and wit on-screen, especially as girl-next-door characters in romantic comedies.

Bullock spent most of her childhood in Nürnberg, Germany, though she often traveled with her mother, who was a German opera singer, and occasionally performed in her mother’s productions. Bullock attended high school in Virginia, and she later studied drama at East Carolina University. In 1986 she moved to New York, where she studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. After receiving positive attention for the Off-Broadway play No Time Flat, Bullock made her motion-picture debut in Hangman (1987) and took supporting roles in such films as Religion, Inc. (1989) and the television movie Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). Her first leading role was in Who Shot Pat? (1989), a romantic coming-of-age film that examines racial tensions in the 1950s. In 1990 Bullock starred in the short-lived TV series Working Girl, playing an ambitious New York City executive.

In 1992 Bullock displayed her earnest charm in the romantic comedy Love Potion No. 9. This led to a series of films the following year, including the thriller The Vanishing; Demolition Man, in which she starred alongside action star Sylvester Stallone, and the drama Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. Her big breakthrough, however, was the thriller Speed (1994), about a policeman (played by Keanu Reeves) who, with the assistance of a plucky passenger (Bullock), must deactivate a bomb on a bus. In 1996 Bullock earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance in the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995). Seeking parts outside her typical romantic comedy roles, she appeared in the thriller The Net (1995); A Time to Kill (1996), based on the legal novel of the same name by best-selling author John Grisham; and In Love and War (1996), a drama about Ernest Hemingway’s wartime romance that inspired his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929).

In the late 1990s Bullock founded the production company Fortis Films, which in 1998 produced the romantic drama Hope Floats and the comedy Practical Magic; Bullock starred in both movies. That same year her voice was featured in the animated The Prince of Egypt. She returned to familiar territory as an endearing but eccentric lead in the romantic comedy Forces of Nature (1999), opposite Ben Affleck. In 2000 her performance in 28 Days was praised, as she balanced humour with vulnerability to portray a writer and party girl who is sent to rehabilitation. Later that year Bullock had a box office hit with Miss Congeniality, a comedy in which she played an FBI agent who goes undercover as a beauty pageant contestant.

Continuing to pursue work in all genres of film, she starred as a homicide detective in Murder by Numbers (2002), as a playwright who has a difficult relationship with her mother in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002), and as an underappreciated lawyer in Two Weeks Notice (2002). She later appeared as the racist wife of a Los Angeles district attorney in the critically acclaimed Crash (2004). Bullock took another serious role when she portrayed the American author Harper Lee in Infamous(2006), a biopic about writer Truman Capote. In 2006 she reunited with Reeves in The Lake House, a romance about two people who fall in love by sending letters forward and backward in time.

After appearing in the romantic comedies The Proposal (2009) and All About Steve (2009), Bullock starred as a determined mother in the sports drama The Blind Side; she won numerous accolades for her performance, including an Academy Award for best actress. Another maternal role followed in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), a film about a boy coping with the death of his father in the September 11 attacks. In 2013 Bullock earned laughs as half of a mismatched pair of female FBI agents in the broad, raunchy comedy The Heat. Later that year she starred with George Clooney in Gravity, an acclaimed drama about astronauts struggling to survive after their spacecraft has been destroyed; Bullock earned an Oscar nomination for her performance. She then voiced the villainous Scarlett Overkill in the animated comedy Minions (2015).

Sandra Bullock’s Fears For Her Black Son

The actress spoke about shielding her adopted black son from racism as he comes of age in America. But the best thing white adoptive parents can do is educate themselves.

Actress Sandra Bullock recently spoke out about the anxiety she feels for her adopted black son. The Our Brand Is Crisis star adopted the now-5-year-old Louis from New Orleans in 2010 when he was an infant and is reportedly in the final stages of adopting a baby girl, also from New Orleans. Back in 2010, there was speculation from some that the adoption was a PR move meant to soften the sting of her high-profile divorce from TV star Jesse James—hurtful reports that proved to be bogus, since she’d been trying to adopt for several years prior to the couple’s split. She hasn’t shared much about her life with little Louis, but that changed this week.

In the November issue of Glamour magazine, Bullock talks about her anxiety in anticipating the racism she knows her son will face. “You see how far we’ve come in civil rights—and where we’ve gotten back to now. I want my son to be safe. I want my son to be judged for the man he is,” the actress says. “We are at a point now where if we don’t do something, we will have destroyed what so many amazing people have done.”

She said that she is afraid she won’t be able to shield him.

“You look at women’s rights; it’s turning into a mad, mad world out there. But sometimes it needs to get really loud for people to say, ‘I can’t unsee this.’ If I could ride in a bubble with him for the rest of his life, I would. But I can’t.”

Bullock’s fears aren’t special or unique. Black mothers have spoken and written about the fear they have for their sons living and growing in a society that deems them a threat. And when, in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder, the president himself mentioned that “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” and shared that, “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.”

Sandra Bullock operates from a position of white privilege. Those who consider themselves aware, who have the audacity to call themselves “progressive”—they have to start with recognizing that particular truth. Recognizing her son’s blackness and what that means for him is part of understanding who he is and how his experiences will be different from hers. All too often, white folks can only value interactions with black people that don’t demand that they recognize the racism that black people face; and inversely, they never have to acknowledge the societal privilege born of white supremacy.

Bullock didn’t say anything remarkable about race. She simply stated what is and should always be fairly obvious. But the weight of her statement gets magnified in the context of the current pop culture climate. If Matt Damon and Miley Cyrus are any indication, many white superstars are clearly invested in distorting or dismissing the reality of racism.

Nicki Minaj spoke to The New York Times about her issues with Cyrus—which played out in memorable and awkward fashion during the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. In her Times interview, Minaj amplified her criticism of Cyrus, stating that white people who “connect” with black people don’t mute those black people. “The fact that you feel upset about me speaking on something that affects black women makes me feel like you have some big balls,” Minaj said, referencing Miley’s attack on her for calling out racial bias in award nominations. “You’re in videos with black men, and you’re bringing out black women on your stages, but you don’t want to know how black women feel about something that’s so important? Come on, you can’t want the good without the bad. If you want to enjoy our culture and our lifestyle, bond with us, dance with us, have fun with us, twerk with us, rap with us, then you should also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us, what we feel is unfair to us. You shouldn’t not want to know that.’’

Famous white people opting out of the race conversation or offering foolish declarations regarding it have skewed the conversation to the point where we laud virtually any commentary that isn’t dismissive, but Bullock sharing her fears isn’t saying much in and of itself.

From Tom Cruise to Stephen Spielberg to Madonna, white celebrities adopting black children has become fairly standard in Hollywood circles. But raising those children “in a bubble” that “shields” them from the racism does them no favors and is indicative of why elite white people raising black children raises serious questions. How do white parents talk to black children about race in a way that isn’t condescending or dismissive? Because black kids will face racism or have to witness how racism affects those who look like them. There doesn’t appear to be much good in keeping your children in cultural spaces that you think are “above” racism (such spaces are typically elitist and inherently racist) and hearing a famous white mom share her concerns doesn’t mean much of anything if she isn’t also equipping herself with the tools to address the issues of her concern.

Wanting to “shield” your children from something as harmful as racism is perfectly reasonable; but the best protection white parents of black children can offer would be in educating themselves. 

The Proposal (film)

The Proposal is a 2009 American romantic comedy film set in Sitka, Alaska. Directed by Anne Fletcher and written by Peter Chiarelli, the film features Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in the leading roles, with Betty White, Mary Steenburgen, and Craig T. Nelson in supporting roles. The film was produced by Mandeville Films and released on June 19, 2009, in North America by Touchstone Pictures. The plot centers on a Canadian executive, Margaret Tate, who learns that she may face deportation from the U.S. because of her expired visa. Determined to retain her position as executive chief, Tate convinces her assistant, Andrew Paxton, to temporarily act as her fiancé. Initially planning on resuming their lives after Tate resolves her visa issues, they appear to abandon those plans as their relationship intensifies.

Development on the film began in 2005, when Chiarelli wrote the film's script. Principal filming occurred over a period of two months from March to May 2008. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who criticized its script, but praised the chemistry between Bullock and Reynolds. The film was a box office success, grossing over $317 million worldwide, becoming the highest grossing romantic comedy film of 2009.

Margaret Tate is an executive editor in chief of a book publishing company. After learning she is about to be deported to Canada because she violated the terms of her work visa, she persuades her assistant, Andrew Paxton, to marry her. She reminds Andrew that if she's deported, the work he put in as her assistant will be lost, and he'll be set back in his dream to become an editor. Mr. Gilbertson, a U.S. immigration agent, informs them that he suspects they are committing fraud to avoid Margaret's deportation. Gilbertson tells them that they'll be asked questions about each other separately. If their answers don't match, Margaret will be deported to Canada permanently and Andrew will be convicted of a felony punishable by a $250,000 fine and five years in prison. Andrew insists that Margaret make him an editor after their marriage and publish the book he's been recommending to her. Margaret agrees.

The couple travels to Sitka, Alaska, Andrew's home town, to meet his family. Margaret meets Andrew's mother Grace and grandmother Annie a.k.a. "Gammy". During the trip to the family home, Margaret notices that nearly every shop in town carries the name Paxton and learns that Andrew's family is in fact very wealthy. During a welcome home party, Andrew confronts his father, Joe, who is angry about Andrew's dating the boss he has so long disliked and thinks he is using her to get ahead in his career. After their argument, Andrew announces the engagement to everyone. Margaret also meets Gertrude, Andrew's ex-girlfriend.

The next day, Grace and Annie take Margaret to a local bar to watch a strip dance by a locally famous but over-the-hill exotic dancer, Ramone. Stepping away from the show, Margaret learns from Gertrude that Andrew wanted to become an editor and make his own life and that Andrew had proposed to Gertrude. However, Gertrude refused because she didn't want to leave Sitka for New York. Returning home, Margaret learns of the conflict between Andrew and Joe. That night, Margaret asks Andrew about his relationship with his father, but Andrew refuses to talk. Instead, Margaret opens up to Andrew.

The next day, the family convinces them to marry while they're in Sitka. After Margaret realizes how close Andrew's family is, she becomes upset, gets on Andrew's boat, and speeds away with him. She tells him she has been alone since she was sixteen years old after her parents died and had forgotten what it felt like to have a family. She lets go of the helm and stumbles to the back of the boat. Andrew makes a sharp turn to avoid hitting a buoy, and Margaret falls out of the boat. Andrew quickly turns the boat around and saves her because she can't swim. At the wedding ceremony, Margaret confesses the truth about the wedding to the guests, including Gilbertson, who informs her she has twenty-four hours to leave for Canada. Margaret returns to the Paxton home to pack her things. Andrew rushes to their room only to find Margaret has already left, leaving the aforementioned book manuscript with a note of praise and a promise to publish it. Gertrude attempts to comfort Andrew and asks if he is going to go after her. As he rushes out to find Margaret, another argument arises between him and Joe. Annie fakes a heart attack and convinces them to reconcile before she "passes away". After she succeeds in getting things moving again, she owns up to faking the attack. Andrew's parents realize he really loves Margaret. He goes to New York and tells Margaret he loves her in front of the entire office staff. They kiss, then go to Gilbertson and inform him they are again engaged, but for real this time. The film ends with Gilbertson asking questions (some of them irrelevant) not only to Andrew and Margaret, but also Joe, Grace, Annie and Ramone.

The return of ‘America’s sweetheart’: evergreen Sandra Bullock is toast of Toronto

This weekend’s film festival in Canada sees the A-list actress back after a break, starring as a political spin doctor – in a role vacated by George Clooney.

“There is only one ‘wrong’ here and that is losing!” shouts Sandra Bullock at a room of uncomprehending flunkies in her latest role as a political pugilist handling a tricky campaign. Brought out of an early retirement from the world of polls and focus groups, her character is “a fighter who is being given another shot at the title”. As crowds gather this weekend for the first few days of the influential Toronto film festival, the world’s critics must be wondering if Bullock’s performance in Our Brand Is Crisis could give her another shot at the best actress title.

Certainly the hard-bitten skulduggery she displays in the film, which premiered on Friday night, is nothing like the winsome antics once associated with a star formerly known to the world as Miss Congeniality. That stamp of cuteness has been replaced with a knack for political chicanery and media strategy in a film that marks the next step in Bullock’s long career at the top of the film business.

And it was tactical thinking that won the 51-year-old actress such a tough-talking role in the first place. Her lead part of spin doctor “Calamity” Jane Bodine was secured after she put out an open appeal to her industry for work that might stretch her. “About two and a half years ago I put out feelers, saying, ‘I’m not reading anything I’m excited about. Are there any male roles out there that [producers] don’t mind switching to female?’”, Bullock told Entertainment Weekly.

Her message was received loud and clear by her Gravity co-star George Clooney, who was producing a fictionalised film version of a controversial South American election campaign battle in which he had initially hoped to star. With the flipping of a few personal pronouns, the political spin doctor at the centre of the story became a woman and Clooney stepped aside.

Critics settling down in their seats at the Canadian film festival, an event often seen, in political terminology, as a “bellwether” indicator for Oscar trends, must judge whether Bullock can possibly build on her recent run of impressive performances, from her 2004 appearance as a car-jacked district attorney’s wife in Crash, to her Academy Award-winning doughty mother in The Blind Side and her stratospheric 2013 outing in Gravity. After a short period spent re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, during which Bullock has done little professionally aside from recording a voice part for the animated film Minions, she has judiciously selected her next role.

Frequently ranked the most powerful (and highly paid) actress in Hollywood, Sandy – as she is known to friends – has also held on to her credentials as “America’s sweetheart”, a label she first earned in her 1994 action role opposite Keanu Reeves in Speed and then confirmed by virtue of a succession of kooky romcoms.

“She is absolutely adored by the industry,” said Matt Mueller, editor of Screen International, from Toronto. “She has had real longevity and she really connects to audiences, whether she is in a drama or quite a broad comedy. The makers of Our Brand Is Crisis will have wanted her to lift the profile of the film for a wider audience.”

Indeed, such is the warm feeling for Bullock in America that the star’s recent personal problems have been charted hour by hour in the media. Last week we learned that she was out on a double-date with newlyweds Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux at a cosy table in her own bistro in Austin, Texas. Onlookers remarked that Bullock and her new model boyfriend, Bryan Randall, were “very handsy” with each other throughout the meal.

Seldom can celebrity gossip have been so (almost) completely well-intended. For Bullock has had a rocky ride. In 2010, just as she shot to glory once more with the success of The Blind Side, she was forced to reveal she was separating from her husband, Jesse G James, a leather-clad “motorbike mogul”. She had reportedly worked hard at becoming a reliable stepmother to his three children by a previous marriage, despite a bitter custody battle, and had only then taken the decision to adopt a new child, Louis. She told the Daily Mirror at the time: “You don’t think [heartbreak] will pass when you’re in the middle of it, but it does. I’m so lucky to have what I have. I have a beautiful child.”

After their separation, Bullock brought up her son, now five, alone and says he has become the core of her life. Speaking on television earlier this year, Bullock said: “When he’s off to college, we’ll divert my attention to something else, but right now it’s all about Lou.”

This summer the actress has been photographed out and about with Randall, who has been excitedly dubbed “another bad boy” because he has fallen foul of the law in various semi-serious ways, driving under the influence and reportedly scaring neighbours.

If anything, Bullock’s apparent taste for “difficult men” has only added to her appeal as one of a new breed of tough queens of Hollywood. Apparently indefatigable, like Cleopatra, “age cannot wither her”, or at least not as long as she keeps up all the Pilates, spinning and running. Bullock now stands tall alongside Angelina Jolie, Cate Blanchett and Julianne Moore – each of them powerbrokers who are prepared to punch hard alongside, or above, A-list Hollywood men. One word from any of these women can green light or stall a film dead. Things have certainly moved on since the old complaint that, following the golden age of the studios when Joan Crawford and Bette Davis held sway, an actress had no value in Tinseltown beyond the age of 30.

Our Brand Is Crisis is directed by David Gordon Green and inspired by a 2005 documentary of the same name that followed the work of James Carville’s leading political consulting firm as it worked on Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s campaign for president of Bolivia in 2002. Carville is the former spin doctor and political pundit who was a key player in several American Democratic election campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory over George H W Bush, and who was featured in the acclaimed documentary The War Room a year later. Improbably, he also fell in love with Mary Matalin, his Republican opposite number, and the unlikely couple remain married. The balding Carville, sometimes referred to as “the ragin’ Cajun”, is the man who coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid”.

In the new film, which has a screenplay by the British writer Peter Straughan, Bullock’s character, a female version of Carville, has to battle with an old foe, a rival spin doctor called Pat Candy, played by Billy Bob Thornton. In 2012 Straughan shared a Bafta and was nominated for an Oscar with his late wife Bridget O’Connor for his screenplay for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and he is no newcomer to pacing an intense political drama, having adapted Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall for the BBC to general acclaim this year.

His script has deftly spun the gender of the characters around, with the bald head happily stopping, not on Bullock, but on Thornton. In the runup to the presidential race in America the appetite for political trickery and high stakes PR campaigning is probably reliably whetted by now. The film clearly hopes to follow the success of Clooney’s 2011 political feature The Ides of March and on the popularity of Armando Iannucci’s satirical television series Veep, starring Julia Louis-Drey fuss as a hapless vice-president who is soon destined to become a hapless first lady.

The lineup at Toronto also seems to be banking on a wide public interest in politics: in addition to Our Brand Is Crisis, Bryan Cranston is to star in McCarthy era drama Trumbo; Stonewall will chart the New York riots of the 1960s; Truthwill look at political reporting, as Robert Redford plays veteran anchorman Dan Rather; and Michael Moore will premiere his latest film Where to Invade Next.

Not only is Bullock’s latest one of a number of political tales testing the waters at Toronto, two of her fellow Hollywood queens are also appearing in roles that have one eye on the Oscar statuette. Cate Blanchett, already a contender for Carol, co-stars with Robert Redford in Truth and Julianne Moore performs opposite Ellen Page in the gay rights story Freeheld.

“Bullock is well placed after The Blind Side and Gravity, but, from the trailer, her film looks less likely to put her in line for an Oscar than some of her recent more dramatic parts,” said Mueller ahead of Friday’s premiere. “I suspect, despite her popularity, she may have trouble fending off Blanchett and Moore.”

Perhaps. But no one, given Bullock’s evergreen status as an audience favourite, will be writing her off.

Sandra Bullock Biography

Academy Award-winning actress Sandra Bullock is known for her roles in such films as 'Speed,' 'While You Were Sleeping,' 'The Proposal' and 'The Blind Side.'

Synopsis

Born July 26, 1964, in Arlington, Virginia, Sandra Bullock made her first stage appearance at age 5 in an opera in Germany. She first became widely known for her role in the 1994 hit Speed. She has since starred in many more films, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe for her performance in The Blind Side (2009), based on the true-life story of football player Michael Oher. In 2013, she starred alongside George Clooney in the critically acclaimed film Gravity. She was named Entertainer of the Year by Entertainment Weekly in both 2009 and 2013.

Early Life

Actress Sandra Annette Bullock was born on July 26, 1964, in Arlington, Virginia, to a German opera singer and a voice teacher. Bullock grew up largely on the road. She studied music and dance while she traveled throughout Europe, and made her first stage appearance at the age of 5 in a small role for an opera in Nurem burg, Germany. The performance helped her to develop a love of the stage, and she began appearing regularly in the Nurem burg children's choir.

When Bullock was 12, her family moved back to the Washington, D.C. area, where she attended Washington-Lee High School. Bullock had no problem fitting in, becoming involved in cheerleading and school theater productions until her graduation in 1982. Bullock then enrolled at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, to study acting. However, she left college only three credits shy of her bachelor's degree, and moved to New York in 1986 to pursue acting in earnest. She joined the Neighborhood Playhouse Theatre, where she took acting classes, and supported herself with waitressing and bartending work.

Early Acting Career

Bullock landed her first gig at the age of 21 in an off-Broadway production of No Time Flat. She used the critical acclaim for her performance to land an agent, but her early acting jobs, which included bit parts in television and B-movies, were unsuccessful and sometimes embarrassing. Bullock made a short run as Tess McGill on the ill-fated NBC sitcom Working Girl (based on the hit movie of the same name), followed by a co-starring role in the romantic comedy Love Potion No. 9 (1992).

In 1993, Bullock replaced Lori Petty in the futuristic Sylvester Stallone vehicle Demolition Man, but critics largely panned the film as "incoherent" and "one-dimensional." It was from the box-office hit Speed (1994) that she first earned widespread recognition. Playing opposite Keanu Reeves, Bullock's plucky performance helped propel the commercial success of what was an otherwise generic action feature.

Big-Budget Films

In the mid-1990s, Bullock appeared in steady stream of big-budget productions of varying commercial success. While films like While You Were Sleeping (1995), The Net (1995) and A Time to Kill (1996) performed well, others such as Two If By Sea (1996) and Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997), were box-office flops. Bullock starred opposite Nicole Kidman the comedy Practical Magic (1998) and opposite Harry Connick Jr. in Hope Floats that same year. In an attempt to expand her dramatic range, Bullock appeared as an alcoholic newspaper columnist sent to rehab in 28 Days (2000).

The film, a mix of dark comedy and melodrama, received tepid reviews, although her comedy Miss Congeniality (2000) did well at the box office. After a brief hiatus, Bullock returned in early 2002 with Murder by Numbers, a crime thriller in which she plays a detective responsible for tracking down a duo of thrill-killers. During the same year, she also appeared in a film version of the best-selling novel The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Two Weeks' Notice, a romantic comedy co-starring Hugh Grant.

Dividing her time between comedy and drama, Bullock starred in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) and the romantic drama The Lake House with Speed co-star Keanu Reeves. In Infamous (2006), an adaptation of a George Plimpton book about Truman Capote, she portrayed writer Harper Lee. Bullock then starred alongside Julian McMahon in the domestic thriller Premonition (2007), playing a wife and mother who tries to prevent her husband's death after experiencing a vision of his demise.

In 2009, Bullock returned to her romantic-comedy roots with two projects. The Proposal featured Bullock as a tough-as-nails boss who must marry her assistant, played by Ryan Reynolds, to avoid being deported, which became a huge box-office smash. All About Steve (2009), however, proved to be a critical and commercial dud. In the film, Bullock played a woman who becomes obsessed with a television cameraman, played by Bradley Cooper, after going on a blind date with him.

Academy Award for Best Actress

Bullock enjoyed a career breakthrough with the sports drama The Blind Side(2009), based on the true-life story of African-American professional football player Michael Oher. She starred as Leah Anne Touhy, a suburban wife and mother who brings Oher (played by Quinton Aaron), a homeless teenager, into her family and helps him overcome his personal challenges. The touching drama earned Bullock an Academy Award for Best Actress, and she also won a Golden Globe for her work on the film.

After the success of The Blind Side, Bullock largely stepped out the Hollywood's spotlight for a time. She made a tremendous return in 2013 with the box-office hit The Heat with Melissa McCarthy. The duo played a pair of mismatched law enforcement agents out to take down a drug lord in this buddy comedy. The film made an impressive debut, bringing in more than $40 million in its first weekend.

Bullock followed with another huge success in 2013, taking on the lead role in the film Gravity, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and co-starring George Clooney. The blockbuster film was highly praised for its visually stunning effects and stellar performances. Though it cost $80 million to create, the film raked in more than $400 million at the worldwide box office, and generated Oscar buzz for Bullock, Clooney and Cuarón.

Her role in Gravity, along with her role alongside McCarthy in The Heat, helped Bullock keep her career in the stratosphere, as she was named Entertainment Weekly's 2013 Entertainer of the Year. However, this wasn't the first time that the versatile actress found herself in the coveted position. In 2009, she was also named Entertainer of the Year for her roles in The Blind Side and The Proposal.

Personal Life

Bullock married Jesse James, star of the TV hit Monster Garage, on July 16, 2005. The couple divorced in June 2010, after news of his affair with tattoo model Michelle McGee hit tabloids. James later apologized for the incident, but Bullock filed for divorce and announced that she would retain sole custody of her newly adopted son, Louis.

Bullock later began dating model and photographer Bryan Randall, and in 2015 she reportedly expanded her family by adopting a baby girl.