Sandra Annette Bullock is an American actress. She came to fame in the 1990s, after roles in successful films such as Speed and While You Were Sleeping. She has since established her career as a well-known leading Hollywood actress, with films such as Miss Congeniality and 2005’s Crash, which received critical acclaim. In 2007 she was ranked as the 14th richest female celebrity with an estimated fortune of $85 million.

Bullock was born in Arlington County, Virginia, the daughter of Helga D. Meyer, a German opera singer and part-time vocal coach, and John W. Bullock, a Pentagon contractor and executive from Alabama. Bullock’s maternal grandfather was a rocket scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. On her father’s side, she is descended from a prominent family in early Alabama history for whom Bullock County is named. Bullock lived in Nuremberg until age twelve, where she sang in the opera’s children’s choir at the Staatstheater Nürnberg. She frequently traveled with her mother on her opera tours, and lived in Germany and other parts of Europe for much of her childhood. She is fluent in German and holds German citizenship via her late mother’s nationality. Bullock studied ballet and vocal arts as a child, taking small parts in her mother’s opera productions.

Bullock attended Washington-Lee High School where she was a cheerleader, participated in high school theater productions and dated a football player. She graduated in 1982 and enrolled in East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. During this time, she worked as a waitress at a restaurant. She later left school during her senior year (Spring 1986), only three credits short of graduating, to pursue an acting career. She went on to Manhattan to pursue auditions and supported herself with a variety of odd jobs (bartender, cocktail waitress, coat checker).
Bullock later completed her coursework and was awarded a bachelor’s degree from East Carolina University.

While in New York, Bullock took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She appeared in several student films and later landed a role in an Off-Broadway play No Time Flat. Director Alan J. Levi was impressed by Bullock’s performance and offered her a part in the made-for-TV movie Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). After filming the TV movie, Bullock stayed in Los Angeles and was cast in a series of small roles in several independent films as well as in the lead role of the short-lived NBC television version of the film Working Girl (1990). She later appeared in several films such as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), The Thing Called Love (1993) and Fire on the Amazon (where she agreed to appear topless if the camera did not show that much, she covered herself with duct tape which apparently was somewhat painful to take off).

One of Bullock’s first notable movie appearances was in the science-fiction/action movie Demolition Man (1993), which starred Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. This role then led to her break-through performance in Speed the following year. She became a high-level movie star in the late 1990s, carrying a string of successes, including While You Were Sleeping (replacing actress Demi Moore, who was originally scheduled to star), and Miss Congeniality. Bullock received $11 million dollars for Speed 2: Cruise Control and $17.5 million dollars for Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous.

Bullock was selected as one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1996 and 1999, and was also ranked #58 in Empire magazine’s Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time list. She was presented with the 2002 Raúl Juliá Award for Excellence for her efforts, as the executive producer of the sitcom The George Lopez Show, in helping expand career openings for Hispanic talent in the media and entertainment industry. She also made several appearances on the show as Accident Amy, an accident-prone employee at the factory Lopez’s character manages. In 2002, she starred opposite Hugh Grant in the global hit Two Weeks Notice.

In 2005, Bullock had a supporting role in the film Crash. She received positive reviews for her performance, with some critics suggesting that it was the best performance of her career. Bullock later appeared in The Lake House, a romantic drama also starring her Speed co-star, Keanu Reeves; it was released on June 16, 2006. Because their film characters are separated throughout the film (due to the plot revolving around time travel), Bullock and Reeves were only on set together for two weeks during filming. The same year, Bullock appeared in Infamous, playing author Harper Lee. Bullock also stars in Premonition with Julian McMahon, which was released in March 2007.

Bullock runs her own production company, Fortis Films. Her sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, is president of the company and her father, John Bullock, is its CEO. She was an executive producer of The George Lopez Show which garnered a lucrative syndication deal that banked Bullock some $10 million (co-produced with Robert Borden). Bullock tried to produce a film based on F.X. Toole’s short story, Million-Dollar Baby, but could not interest the studios in a female boxing drama. The story was eventually adapted and directed by Clint Eastwood as the Oscar-winning film, Million Dollar Baby (2004). Bullock’s production company, Fortis Films, will produce her next movie, All About Steve. In the meantime, she tends to her Austin restaurant, Bess Bistro,and it’s first merchandising tie-in, a line of Bessence organic candles.

Bullock was once engaged to actor Tate Donovan whom she met while filming Love Potion No. 9. Their relationship lasted four years. She previously dated football player Troy Aikman, Austin musician Bob Schneider (for two years) and actors Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Gosling.

Bullock married motorcycle builder and Monster Garage host Jesse James on July 16, 2005. They met when Bullock arranged for her ten-year-old godson to meet James as a Christmas present. On her husband and her marriage, Bullock has commented:

So basically through a courtship of letters … I learned about a human being. It was not something I wanted, needed, or looked for, but because he was a stronger person than I was, spiritually and on a tolerance level, I was lucky enough that he educated me… I always thought of marriage as a death sentence, that there’d be a ball and chain, and you’d be told, “You need to stop doing these things and become a good little wife.” Now people say “Oh my God you’re going to have sex with one person the rest of your life!” I hope I have sex with him for the rest of my life – because I like it!

Bullock has twice donated $1 million to the American Red Cross, first to its Liberty Disaster Relief Fund and four years later in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis.

Miss Congeniality is the furthest thing from me. I relate to the woman in Crash – not the bigotry but the rage. That came easily. My brother-in-law says Premonition is close to the real me. But how can we ever know? I know who I am. My mother looked like a combination of Jackie O and Maria Callas. She always said ‘Be original.’ I understand that now more than ever. (On opening a restaurant in Austin) It’s the male side of me. I do have one. It used to fight with the female, and now they don’t fight anymore. Everything happened when it was supposed to – and everything happened when I was ready for it. I’ve learned that success comes in a very prickly package. Whether you choose to accept it or not is up to you. It’s what you choose to do with it, the people you choose to surround yourself with. Always choose people that are better than you. Always choose people that challenge you and are smarter than you. Always be the student. Once you find yourself to be the teacher, you’ve lost it.
I have an expensive hobby, buying homes, redoing them, tearing them down and building them up the way they want to be built. I think I would go back to school to be an architect.
I think that’s the problem with sequels. You sort of want to stay true to the first one and when you do it you sometimes go too much back to the first one and just repeat what you did before. If you go too far from the first one you lose what it was.
I don’t know if I always want to be in front of the camera. I love producing, I love the camaraderie. I love the adventures. I love the stress. It’s sort of an investment with the next step of my career; where I want to do. I love watching people be creative, and being amazing and putting those people together. Fun stories. It is the other part of my life which I’m moving more towards. Less desire to be in front of the cameras. So it’s both.
(about murder and violent crimes) It’s been going on for thousands of years, but until we’ve had the media we haven’t been able to bring it to the public eye. Lately it seems like there’s an influx of these events. Maybe there is. Maybe there isn’t, but it’s something that does need to be addressed now because we need to look at our society. And we need to look at our home life. What is it that’s making these people so young, so unhappy, so angry and so capable of doing something like this. You know, I think unless you address it, it’s not going to be solved.
When I come to meet the press to publicise my films, I get free food, so that’s a day when I saved some money, which has to be a good thing!
I can remember the first and last names of every single person that terrorized me in junior high. It taught me to be incredibly kind to people.
I can install toilets. I know all about the wax ring. I can tile floors. I’m learning how to do basic wiring.
I didn’t know Bacardi should be mixed with anything so I just drank it straight. My mom took me to hospital because she thought I’d taken drugs.
He (her husband) dresses me. I said I want a jumpsuit and he’s got a clothing company and he made me a jumpsuit. On her husband designing some of her clothing.