She became famous thanks to romantic comedies and suddenly refused to act in them. She won an Oscar and went through a crushing divorce. She had everything and had a lot to lose. Meeting with Sandra Bullock, who is not afraid of change.
Clearly, she is a determined person. When one of her husband’s lovers told the tabloids about their connection, she did not give a single comment. Just got divorced after 2 months. She single-handedly adopted and is raising a little black New Orleans, Louis.
She made the immediate decision not to star in the romantic comedies that brought her fame, and played roles that seemed to deny her Hollywood past in anti-glossy, anti-Hollywood films: the arrogant wife of a rich man in Crash (dir. Paul Haggis, 2004) and the adoptive mother of a troubled black teenager in The Blind Side (dir. John Lee Hancock, 2009), for which she received an Oscar. She, the only Hollywood woman in the history of the Razzie Award, awarded for the worst in the film industry, came to receive her statuette – for the “worst” female role of 2009 (in the film All About Steve by Phil Trail. – Approx. ed.). She opened two restaurants away from Hollywood, in Austin, Texas, and successfully manages them – as well as a ranch near San Diego, where avocados and citrus fruits are grown exclusively organically …
In an organic way… Which is so organic for Sandra Bullock.
It stands at the window of a suite at the Excelsior Hotel on the Venetian island of Lido, and against the backdrop of the local excess design with all its goldenness, tassels and swirls, it resembles an ascetic, distinct exclamation mark. Black hair, attentive black eyes, a knee-length black silk dress that hugged her narrow, toned figure. She smiles and points towards the sofa. She has large and, to tell the truth, ugly hands, the hands of a toiler or a gymnast, one who often has to hold or hold on tight. And she keeps the same way – at ease, not trying to charm and please. Angular movements, nervous plasticity, lively facial expressions. It is all the unintentionality of the exclamation, the inevitability of a direct reaction. At the Venice Film Festival, she’s with Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, where she has a role that earned her a second Oscar nomination and required the 49-year-old actress to have stamina and muscle, the ability to let go of her usual attractiveness, the denial of femininity. After all, she played mainly on cables, in a suspended state – to simulate weightlessness. But of course, you can’t give her forty-nine. She seems to have no age. The only, perhaps, unnatural feature in such a natural person.
Speed, love and gravity
Sandra Bullock born July 26, 1964 in the family of a US military man and an opera singer (her sister Gezina is 3 years younger). She spent her childhood in Nuremberg. When she was 12 years old, her father was transferred to serve in the United States, and the family returned to America. In 1986, Sandra graduated from the Department of Theater and Film at the University of Greenville (North Carolina).
After moving to New York and trying to realize her acting ambitions, she worked as a bartender, cloakroom attendant and waitress. Recognition came to the actress in 1994 with a role in the action movie “Speed” (dir. Jan de Bond), and “beloved America” made her romantic pictures: “While you were sleeping”, “Miss Congeniality”, “Love with notification”, ” Lake house”.
However, she received an Oscar in 2009 for her role in the film The Blind Side by John Lee Hancock, raising social issues. This joyful event coincided with a dramatic one – her husband, TV presenter Jesse James, was publicly convicted of adultery, which led to a divorce. In 2010, Bullock adopted Louie, a black baby. Caring for her son, along with doing business and charity, she considers the main business of life. And even an Oscar nomination for her role in Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity will not persuade her to reconsider her priority system.
Psychologies: Looking at you, it is impossible to determine how old you are. Clearly less than it really is. Sorry, but this is somehow … unnatural. How do you manage to look like this?
Sandra Bullock (looks at me searchingly): I look like this because I’m an actress. I look like this because that’s what I’m paid to do. I look like this because it’s part of a set of required professional qualities. This is the only reason. And it doesn’t matter how I manage it – hours of Pilates, running or spa. The means by which such a goal is to be achieved is absolutely irrelevant. Because the result is my property as a professional, and not as a person.
But is it possible to separate a person and a professional? And isn’t your appearance a part of you?
Read more:
- Michael Fassbender: “I owe a lot to my naivete”
S. B.: The person in front of the camera and just the person are quite separable. These are different … substances. In recent years, I have been fully prepared for the moment when my life will not include being in front of the camera. And therefore, in front of the camera, I easily lose this very attractiveness. Like in “Gravity” — where, for the sake of the author’s idea, femininity, sexuality are cut off from me, as it were…
I thought about it when I learned that Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson turned down the part. And you, on the threshold of the 50th anniversary, agreed …
S. B.: Yes, the golden girls of Hollywood … And I worked as a waitress in a diner and generally started working as a teenager, because my parents had such an attitude: if you want frills, make money on them yourself … The Protestant labor code of my German mother … And I worked from the age of 13 – cleaned the offices. And then a waitress. I liked serving tables – here your efficiency is clear. So I’m not afraid of difficult and even unpleasant work … And I like the transformation that I underwent in “Gravity” – from a generally wow woman to a sexless, short-haired muscular creature, and then into almost a lizard! I appreciate less and less what is connected with sexual attractiveness.
mother hare
But what is the reason? Age? Your divorce? Sorry for the impudence, but I hear the consequences of mental trauma in your words.
S. B.: Broken heart, you mean? No, it’s a personality trait. And upbringing. After this scandalous divorce of mine, everyone tried to understand to what extent I was out. I was out, but not because of male infidelity. Mom raised me and my sister in such a way that it never occurred to us to depend on a man in any way. But I could rely on a person, and I was out because of the deception of a loved one. And so – I never seriously believed in sex. It’s satirized splendidly in Skirt Cops, one of the few comedies I’m proud to be a part of. There, a bad guy says to my heroine: “Wow, you are over 40, but I got up!” I believe in other connections. In what is off the floor. Every day I feel the presence of my mother next to me. We were very close. And she is always with me. She died many years ago, but she didn’t die for me. I consult with her, I assume that she would answer my question. Especially now that I have a child of my own. He is three years old, and he is the main man in my life, now I don’t even understand how I lived for so many years without Louis. What happened to me before Louis? And I have a special connection with him.
Read more:
- Emma Thompson: “I’m a clown at heart”
Has motherhood changed you?
S. B.: Yes, it changed everything in me and around me. I was… You see, I didn’t have a fabulous childhood and a wonderful youth. I was bullied in high school – coming from Europe when my dad was transferred to serve back in the States, I was too different. And I proved that I was not just different … I sobbed and claimed with all my actions that I was special. You know, by normal human standards, I was neither eighteen nor twenty-five. For as long as I can remember, I have been focused on work, on success, on achievement. And not just for success, but for success in business. So that I can appreciate it myself. I don’t have this experience of youth – not to worry, to relax from exams to exams … I lived with the conviction that if I didn’t act constantly and in constant tension, I wouldn’t do anything in life at all. And now I suddenly realized that here it is, this magical, carefree phase – relax and enjoy.
Why can you relax right now? Because you have already done a lot and achieved a lot?
S. B.: No, because I felt enough. Love. Deception. Losses. And another love for Louis. With him, after he appeared, I became more sensitive. I can be touched, cry … Before – but for nothing. But now everything that was empty sentiment is full of meaning. The meaning of feelings. Compared to motherhood, all life before is dead. In the sense that then I felt a hundred times less. And I never thought that it would mean so much to me the person to whom I should read about the engine Thomas and the hare, who dreams of running away from his mother. That it will be so important for me to have such a person. And that this fairy tale itself is for me now, don’t laugh – hard realism in prose.
And what is this fairy tale?
S. B.: A fairy tale … It is called “How the hare ran away” *. Actually, this is a rather long – well, for a three-year-old man, my son – a dialogue between a hare and his mother: the hare fantasizes that he will run away, swim away, fly away from his mother, and his mother says that she will follow him everywhere. “Then I will become a bird and fly away from you!” “And I will become your tree. You will fly to me and rest on my branches. And the hare turns into a fish, then uphill, then into a boat, then into an acrobat on a trapeze, and the hare mother is always there. I am that rabbit. Louis now dictates my life routes.
Is this a special treatment for an adopted child?
S. B.: I have nothing to compare with – I do not know. But I know that everything is not so simple – love is not at all something that can be born biologically. Why, even in adopting, I instinctively tried to approach the natural acquisition of a child. To the randomness of the game of nature, the spontaneity of the meetings of chromosomes. It didn’t matter to me who it was – a boy, a girl, what race … I had one, so to speak, parameter: that he be from New Orleans, a city that suffered a lot, a city where they suffered a lot. And although I waited for two years, the call from the agency was an absolute surprise: come and pick it up. Black. 3 months. I wasn’t even ready organizationally. But for some reason, as soon as we saw each other, a connection arose between us. And now I’m a bunny mom.
It won’t take long to spoil him.
S. B.: To be honest, there is a risk. There are no boys in our family besides him. And he turned out to be the crown prince! But it doesn’t look like he can be spoiled in principle – he is naturally very reasonable. I just wanted to speak German with him – this language, and not English, is my native language. Until the age of 12, I lived in Germany, and then every summer I spent with my grandmother in Bavaria. So, at the age of 3, Louis grasps him very quickly, understands the explanations. As well as explanations why something cannot be done. And he likes our daily ritual. gratitude ritual. This is when we tell each other at the end of the day what we saw, experienced, even ate during the day, for which it makes sense to thank fate. Louis easily learns gratitude… I don’t have a religious feeling, I don’t believe in fate and predestination, but I came to the conclusion that Louis is not an accident for me. And he appeared not only for love. For knowledge too. You know, I realized: you can’t understand a man without raising a man.
clown cop
Sandra Bullock’s latest record as Hollywood’s highest-paid actress is Paul Fig’s “Cops in Skirts” box office. The comedy about the teamwork of a middle-aged single FBI employee (Bullock) and a hundredweight police officer (Melissa McCarthy) exceeded its budget by five times. This comedy, seemingly unpretentious, works on our prejudices in the most radical way. Circus, grotesque. For Bullock, the transformation of her role from the sweet-absurd girl of rom-coms to almost a clowness is important. So now she’s filming a sequel, Cops 2.
diner hostess
Your purely female experience did not help you understand men?
S. B.: I had different relationships. I was a little over twenty, and I was running like a cur for my first serious partner (actor Tate Donovan. – Approx. ed.), Listening to the intonations of his voice … I literally pursued him for a year, and then for another four convinced that I was the best, on what he can count on. And I wasn’t convinced! After thirty, I moved from Los Angeles to Austin to be near my second serious love, a Texan to the core (actor Matthew McConaughey. – Approx. ed.). But in the end we remained friends. Then there was a musician (Bob Schneider. – Ed.), who was … a musician, did not suit me at all with my German pragmatism and thoroughness. Then a brilliant actor (Ryan Gozling. — Approx. ed.). 16 years younger than me. But … in these relations there was an ease of temporality. And I liked it. I suddenly felt that I like this lightness! I’m forty, he’s a little over twenty, I see my limit and my lot. I will never do musicals, I hate them. It’s the same here: a common life with him was impossible, and this was extremely clear. Yes, the limit was clearly marked. So, there was no need to hold on to anything. You could fly! And then I suddenly began to vaguely guess that I can live, not achieve, I can relax, even when I work. I can love without plans to settle in the beloved’s territory. I can give myself a rest and stop trying to be a superwoman. Become just a woman … Which was the lesson.
So you’ve been in Texas for a long time. It’s not very typical for Californian stars to move to Texas…
S. B.: I went after Matthew, but I stayed because … There in Austin you get off the plane, and it immediately envelops you – the chirping of cicadas, the smell of damp earth, thyme, smoked beans … Everything is natural there, there is a spirit of community, neighborhood. There, everyone doesn’t care that you are a star, there I am the mistress of a bistro, a restaurant and a bakery. And you can live a real life. Normal. Invent sandwich recipes, teach pastry chefs – and we have good pastry chefs! How to bake mom’s chocolate cake. Try to balance debit with credit. It turned out that I am a good entrepreneur!
Are you preparing an alternate airfield? But what about cinema?
S. B.: On the contrary, acting is an alternate airfield! No, really. By and large, being an actress is not my thing. Everything is out of my control there, I am an object in the hands of decision makers. And there I am part of a huge mechanism, a corporation. And in the restaurant everything is a consequence of my actions, my choice. I develop recipes and menus, I form a pool of suppliers, and I build relationships with everyone. And I don’t please, I don’t try to please the director or, there, the producer. I interact! I am starting a small business. It’s the little one. It is man-made, which is why I took it. Because here I can… Do you know that it takes at least 12 hours to make competent croissants?
12 hours?..
S. B.: And in order for them to be ready, say, by 7 in the morning, do you need to put the dough in the refrigerator in the evening, and in the morning start doing them again at four o’clock? And now I know it well. And I love that kind of knowledge. I even began to guess why in a New York cafe croissants are so irresistible. The taste of melted butter and something else in the dough itself…
And what is it?
S. B.: I suspect that instead of the usual white sugar, they put burnt powdered into powder.
1 W. Brown “How the hare ran away” (Pink giraffe, 2010).
Blitz-poll
What is your strongest impression lately?
Not for the last. In general, in life. From the call records of the passengers on the planes hijacked by the terrorists to attack the World Trade Center. Their words to those they loved…. No, they love. Is love in the past tense?
Series you would like to star in?
Oh, don’t add salt! An aristocrat among the series! Adore! But who will let an American simpleton into him?
What is your most reckless act?
Love. All my loves. Do you have it differently?
What is the best thing to do in your life?
Listen, there are a lot of them. I managed to show my parents how much I love them and how grateful I am to them. I adopted Louis. I have been able to help many people. (Bullock’s donations to charity reach several million dollars. – Approx. ed.) And finally … not so long ago I received a diploma as a “pastry baker of the first category.” Are you jealous?
Stills from the film “Speed” (1994) starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. The film turns 2014 in 20.