Sandra Bullock

Sandra Annette Bullock ( pron.: /ˈbʊlək/ ; born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer who rose to fame in the 1990s after roles in successful films such as  Demolition Man, Speed,  The Net,  Hope Floats,  A Time to Kill, and  While You Were Sleeping. In the new millennium, she appeared in such films as  Miss Congeniality,  The Lake House, and  Crash, the third of which received critical acclaim. In 2007, she was ranked as the 14th richest female celebrity with an estimated fortune of US$85 million.  In 2009, Bullock starred in two of the more financially successful films of her career,  The Proposal<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> and  The Blind Side<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> Bullock was awarded a  Golden Globe Award for Best Actress<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, a  Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, and the  Academy Award for Best Actress<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">, for her role as  Leigh Anne Tuohy<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> in  The Blind Side<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;">. She is listed in the 2012 edition of the  Guinness Book Of World Records<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;line-height:19.1875px;"> as the highest-paid actress, with $56 million.

Early life
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Sandra Annette Bullock was born in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Her father, John W. Bullock (born 1925), was a United States Army employee and part-time voice coach from Birmingham, Alabama; her mother, Helga D. Meyer (1942–2000), was a German opera singer and voice teacher. Bullock's maternal grandfather was a rocket scientist fromNuremberg, Germany. Bullock's father John, then in charge of the Army's Military Postal Service in Europe, was stationed in Nuremberg when he met his wife. They married in Germany and moved to Arlington, where John worked with the Army Materiel Command, before becoming a contractor for The Pentagon.Bullock has a younger sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, who was formerly the vice-president of Bullock's production company Fortis Films, and is now a pastry chef in Vermont.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">As a child, Bullock frequently accompanied her mother on European opera tours. She spent time in Salzburg and Nuremberg, where she stayed with her aunt and grandmother and became fluent in German. Bullock studied ballet and vocal arts as a child, taking small parts in her mother's opera productions. She sang in the operas children's choir at the Staatstheater Nürnberg.The scar above her left eye was caused when she fell into a creek as a child.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Bullock attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was a cheerleader and performed in high school theater productions. After graduating in 1982, she attended East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where she received a degree in drama in 1986. She then moved to Manhattan and supported herself as a bartender, cocktail waitress, and coat checker while auditioning for roles.

Acting
Bullock at the 2010 SAG Awards red carpet.<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">While in New York, Bullock took acting classes with Sanford Meisner.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13" style="line-height:1em;">[13]  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 TV movie Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). Afterward, she 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. A prominent supporting role in the science-fiction/action movie Demolition Man (1993) led to her breakthrough performance in Speed the following year. She became a movie star in the late 1990s, carrying a string of successes, including While You Were Sleeping, and Miss Congeniality in 2000. Bullock received $11 million for Speed 2: Cruise Control, which she agreed to star in for financial backing for her own project, Hope Floats, and has revealed she regrets making the sequel. She later received $17.5 million for Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">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 George Lopez, 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 Two Weeks Notice and in the film Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 2004, 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. In 2005, she was a co-recipient of the Women in Film Crystal Award.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In 2008, Sandra Bullock was announced as "the face" of prestigious cosmetic brand Artistry.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Wave_Magazine_19-0" style="line-height:1em;">[19]  The same year, Bullock appeared in Infamous, playing author Harper Lee. Bullock also starred in Premonition with Julian McMahon, which was released in March 2007.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-San_Bernardino_20-0" style="line-height:1em;">[20]  2009 proved to be especially good for Bullock, giving the actress two record highs in her career, as earlier in the year she released The Proposal, with co-star Ryan Reynolds, a huge hit that took in more than $314 million at the box office worldwide, making it her most successful picture to date.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-21" style="line-height:1em;">[21]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">In November 2009, Bullock starred in The Blind Side, which opened at #2 behind New Moon with $34.2 million, making it her highest opening weekend ever. The Blind Side is unique in that it had a 17.6% increase at the box office its second weekend, and it took the top spot of the box office in its third weekend. The movie cost $29 million to make according to the Box Office Mojo. It has grossed over $309 million to date, making it her domestic highest grossing film and the first movie in history to pass the $200 million mark with only one top-billed female star.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-22" style="line-height:1em;">[22] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-23" style="line-height:1em;">[23]  She won the award for Best Actress at the Golden Globes, Academy Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in The Blind Side.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-24" style="line-height:1em;">[24]  Bullock had initially turned down the role three times due to a discomfort with portraying a devout Christian. Winning the "Oscar" also gave her another unique distinction — since she won two "Razzies" the day before, for her performance in All About Steve, she is the only performer ever to have been named both "Best" and "Worst" for the same year. Sandra was asked to return her 2009 "Worst Actress of the Year" Razzie award; however, this wasn't because of a change of heart for Bullock's performance but because Bullock personally accepted her Razzie and accidentally took the original one-of-a-kind prototype Razzie, as opposed to the cheap trinket normally handed out to celebrities.

[edit] Recognition
Sandra Bullock's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">As of 2009, Bullock's films have grossed over $3.1 billion worldwide.According to The Numbers, her total domestic gross stands at $1.7 billion, placing her among the Top 100 Stars at the Box Office.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Critics, while praising her screen persona, have been less receptive to her films. As of the 2009 release of The Proposal, Mark Kermode said she's made only three "good" films in her career—Speed, While You Were Sleeping, and Crash, and says "she's funny, she's gorgeous, it's impossible not to love her and yet she makes rotten film after rotten film after rotten film." As of December 2009, Bullock has appeared on three Entertainment Weekly covers. She was selected by People Magazine as its "Woman of the Year" for 2010.She was ranked #12 on People's Most Beautiful 2011 list.

[edit] Entrepreneurship
<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Bullock runs her own production company, Fortis Films. Bullock was an executive producer of the George Lopez sitcom, which garnered a lucrative syndication deal that banked her 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, also produced All About Steve, which was released in September 2009. Her father, John Bullock, is the company's CEO, and her sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, is the former president.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;"> Since November 2006, Bullock founded a popular Austin, Texas restaurant, Bess Bistro. She later opened another business across the street in a building she extensively renovated downtown called Walton's Fancy and Staple   a bakery, upscale restaurant and floral shop that also offers services such as event planning.