Sandra Bullock

Sandra Bullock is an American actress and producer who became one of Hollywood's biggest stars during the 1990s, building a career that has moved effortlessly between action movies, romantic comedies, thrillers and award-winning dramas. Born Sandra Annette Bullock on July 26, 1964, in Arlington, Virginia, Bullock began acting professionally during the late 1980s and gradually worked her way through television and film roles before landing the movie that changed everything. That movie was Speed. Released in 1994, Speed paired Bullock with Keanu Reeves in one of the decade's great action movies. Bullock played Annie Porter, a passenger forced behind the wheel of a Los Angeles bus rigged to explode if its speed dropped below 50 mph. The film was a huge success and transformed Bullock into a major Hollywood star. She followed it with a run of successful films including While You Were Sleeping, The Net, A Time to Kill, Hope Floats and Practical Magic, establishing herself as one of the most familiar leading actresses of the 1990s. Bullock returned as Annie for Speed 2: Cruise Control in 1997, although Reeves didn't return for the sequel and the film failed to match the original's success. The 2000s brought another of Bullock's most memorable roles when she played FBI agent Gracie Hart in Miss Congeniality. The comedy became a favourite with audiences and was followed by Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous in 2005. Other notable films from this period included Two Weeks Notice, The Lake House — which reunited her with Keanu Reeves — and the ensemble drama Crash. Bullock enjoyed another major run of success towards the end of the decade. The romantic comedy The Proposal, opposite Ryan Reynolds, became a box-office hit in 2009, while her performance as Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. She followed that success with one of the most ambitious films of her career. In Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, Bullock played astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone, who becomes stranded in space following a catastrophic accident. The 2013 film was a huge critical and commercial success and earned Bullock another Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her later career has continued to mix genres, with appearances in Ocean's 8, the enormously successful Netflix thriller Bird Box, The Unforgivable and the action-adventure comedy The Lost City. Bullock has also worked extensively as a producer, including through her production company Fortis Films. From desperately trying to keep a bus above 50 mph in Speed to going undercover at a beauty pageant in Miss Congeniality and fighting to survive alone in space in Gravity, Sandra Bullock has built a career around characters audiences genuinely want to root for. For anyone who spent the 1990s wandering around a video shop deciding what to rent on a Friday night, her face seemed to be on half the shelves. And more than three decades after Speed made her a superstar, Sandra Bullock remains one of the defining movie stars of her generation.