Back in business

Bullock is back to promote the follow-up to 2000's endearingly frothy comedy

10 April 2012

Hollywood actors and actresses are always vowing to take a year off. Then weeks - sometimes only days - go by and the trade papers announce their latest project.

But in 2002, in the wake of Two Weeks Notice, her hit romantic comedy opposite Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock was as good as her word. That she managed to take 18 months off instead speaks volumes about this secure 40-year-old, who also happens to be one of the most successful women in Hollywood.

'Yep,' she grins. 'It became a year and two months, four months and then six months.

I was more tired than I imagined. It was like I didn't know who I was or even how to think any more. I'd left my life on page 34 with a bookmark. So I travelled, saw things I'd always wanted to see, and got to go to birthdays and other events. I was never like, "Oh God, I have to work" or, "Oh God, I'm not in a magazine." I think Jamie Lee Curtis said it best: "The more I get to know myself, the less I want to be someone else on screen."' As both star and producer of Two Weeks Notice, she says, three exhausting years of her life had disappeared.

Most actor/actress-producer credits appear to satisfy a star's vanity. But when Bullock is listed as a producer it means she gets her hands dirty.

Her latest self-produced film is this week's Miss Congeniality 2, while her TV series, The George Lopez Show, is the first Latino-themed family sitcom on a major network. Bullock has long been a champion of minorities (Latinos are notoriously given short shrift by Hollywood despite their enormous numbers in the US) and ordinary people with neither wealth nor clout.

She spent much of her self-enforced hiatus (and untold amounts of money) fighting (and winning) a case in her home town of Austin, Texas, against a shoddy local builder on behalf of herself and 60 neighbouring families who could never have afforded legal representation.

She also spends a lot of time with a young Austin girl named Priscilla who is fighting cancer ( Miss Congeniality 2 features a character named Priscilla in her friend's honour).

And she donated $1 million to the American Red Cross's Tsunami Relief Fund. 'Because I can,' she shrugs. But she cites her biggest accomplishment during her time off as running 'a 10K race in Austin to benefit people who can't afford health insurance. And I really hate running.'

She looks good on it, though. Long and lean in sky blue jeans, stilettos and biker-style designer leather. But her face is her best feature, not picture perfect, but angular, attractive and smooth.

Bullock is back to promote the follow-up to 2000's endearingly frothy comedy in which she played undercover FBI agent Gracie Hart.

This time around, Hart has become a media sensation no longer able to live her life out of the headlines. It's a situation Bullock identifies with.

'Sometimes being a celebrity is like being a covert FBI agent,' she grimaces.

'Just going to the shop to get your groceries is a whole operation. I'll be there with my Tampax, thinking, "Oh God, I hope there's no one outside with a telephoto lens." I'm convinced the reason celebrities get so much money is so they can build walls people can't jump over.'

Recently, news emerged that Bullock had tried to make Million Dollar Baby but failed, before it was finally taken on by Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank. So she might now have been nesting with Oscar as well as her much bigger man of almost a year, custom Harley Davidson-maker and TV biker expert Jesse James. Does she wish things were different? Not a bit of it. Bullock has no room for regret in a life that is run with military precision.

'It has to be because I don't put my personal life aside when I go to work. But it's all about scheduling. I'm a scheduling freak. I've set aside dates for weddings and things up until August. When they come around people say, "Oh, you'll give us that extra time," and I say, "No, I won't."'

Would she like to get married herself? 'Believe me, that is not in my schedule. Not that I have anything against it. I'm just not one of those people who goes, "Oh, to complete my life I have to be married". I honestly think people would be happier if they didn't see that as the ultimate achievement.

"It's like when people say, "Why aren't you married?" Is it OK if you're divorced because someone wanted you once? I've essentially been married twice, in long-term relationships. I just didn't have to go through the messy "That's my chair, that's my CD" bit. I know where my CDs are.'

Bullock is so fiercely private when it comes to her romantic life that it's difficult to be sure which two men she means. One is probably actor Tate Donovan, who she met on the forgettable 1992 film Love Potion No. 9 and dated for three years. The other is almost certainly Matthew McConaughey, who she met on A Time To Kill in 1996 and reportedly dated on-and-off for several years, though neither has ever even confirmed that they had a relationship.

Ask her about her current boyfriend and all she will say is, 'I'm just lucky to be able to wake up every day and have what I have. I'm better cared for than I ever thought I would be, and better than I thought I deserved.' If she remains resistant to marriage, she can thank her late mother Helga, a German opera singer who died in 2000. 'She raised my sister Gesine and I, saying, "Don't ever get married." She would tell us, "Don't rely on a man, do your own thing."'

If Bullock isn't being pestered about 'the M-word', as she calls it, she's being grilled about children. 'Again, why should there be plans for children? Don't get me wrong, I love children. I have a godson who is 10 years old. If something happens to his parents, I am the carer. That's a huge responsibility and I take it very seriously.

'But I don't want to be one of those who says, "You have to step aside while Mummy goes and acts with Al Pacino." Look at all that I already have. At what point is it enough?'

Miss Congeniality 2 opens Fri 25 Mar.

Back in business

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