The movie Sandra Bullock waited her whole career to make: “Too long if you ask me”
Sandra Bullock has been an A-list star in Hollywood for over three decades, yet it took her until 2018 to star in the movie she had arguably been waiting her whole career for. You see, despite advances made in the last decade, the way the movie industry treats men and women has never been equal. Even tremendous stars like Bullock fell afoul of that disparity many times, whether it manifested in pay gaps or a glass ceiling regarding the kinds of roles she could vie for.
Indeed, it’s a damning indictment of Hollywood that the actor admitted to spending a large portion of her career looking on with envy at the types of movies the average male star was given the chance to make. When she starred in 2013’s Gravity, for example, she argued that her lead role of an astronaut stranded in space, battling for survival against all the odds, would have traditionally been a male one in the past. She revealed that she “was always longing to do, emotionally and physically, what my male counterparts always got to do”, yet it took 20 years in the business to finally be given that opportunity.
Throughout her time at the top, though, Bullock didn’t solely want to see an equal playing field in terms of male and female roles. While securing her groundbreaking role in Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi drama was one mission accomplished, the star still had another goal she was striving towards in the background. It took another five years for it to present itself, but when it did, she smilingly told People magazine, “It felt like it was a long time coming”.
In truth, after several years of development, it must have been hugely rewarding for her to stand on the Ocean’s 8 set across from more female A-list talent than had ever been assembled in one movie before. The film – a spinoff of the successful Ocean’s Eleven franchise helmed by Bullock’s Gravity co-star George Clooney – boasted the likes of Cate Blanchett, Sarah Paulson, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, and Rihanna in its cast. The actor admitted that making the film with so many female voices involved was worlds away from the usual status of being one of a scant handful of women in a male-dominated picture.
“I’m just so grateful that it happened,” Bullock said, “It felt like we had all been kept in solitary confinement from each other. Kind of like an ‘actress quarantine’ and when we all found ourselves like sardines in the trailer that first day, it was like the dam burst and we all made up for lost time.”
Ocean’s 8 was marketed as a watershed moment in female representation onscreen, and even though some critics tried to cut it off at the knees, Bullock and her co-stars weren’t accepting that. For example, when the BBC‘s Rhianna Dillon claimed it was a shame that the all-female movie could only get a green light because it was “piggybacking” off a previously male franchise, Blanchett shut her down. She argued Ocean’s 8 was an essential first step in fostering “a cornucopia of female-driven narratives on screen”, but couldn’t “stand for every single film” in the industry.
Bullock also pushed back against unfounded reports that the cast “were at each other’s throats” by flatly stating, “The opposite was true”. She claimed there was no arguing and no egos ran amok, and instead, “A lot of film was wasted on laughing fits that usually resulted in makeup having to be redone”.
All in all, ‘Miss Congeniality’ was adamant that all members of the Ocean’s 8 cast understood its significance, and had all been waiting for a movie like it for as long as she had. Therefore, they worked hard to have each other’s backs while making the best film they possibly could. “We navigated well together,” Bullock explained. “I saw a group of women support each other in the most humbling way. Everyone wanting the other to have their moment.” And so they did with aplomb.
