From rom-coms to resurgence: The one movie that saved Sandra Bullock’s career
Stardom is a hard thing to achieve and arguably more difficult to maintain, but despite the trials and tribulations that come with navigating a cutthroat and ruthless industry, Sandra Bullock has been one of the most recognisable stars in Hollywood for 30 years.
Early roles in The Vanishing and Demolition Man marked her out as a talent with huge potential that was just as comfortable in drama and thrillers as she was in action and comedy, with 1994’s classic Speed serving as a major mainstream breakthrough. Striking while the iron was hot, Bullock continued notching box office winners and popular hits on her cinematic belt before the turn of the millennium led to a downturn.
She kicked things off in style, though, after Miss Congeniality hauled in over $200 million in ticket sales, but after that, the rot started to set in just a little bit. Mundane serial killer thriller Murder by Numbers sank without a trace, and she only starred in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood because her friend was directing.
Nobody remembers the Kevin Bacon-directed drama Loverboy; her much-vaunted reunion with Keanu Reeves in The Lake House failed to live up to the hype, Infamous was the lesser of the two competing Truman Capote biopics by far, and the supernatural thriller Premonition is the worst movie of her entire career that isn’t called Speed 2: Cruise Control.
There were victories along the way, but it’s indicative of her decline that Crash is regarded as one of the worst ‘Best Picture’ winners ever, Miss Congeniality sequel Armed and Fabulous earned half as much as its predecessor from cinemas, while Two Weeks Notice saw Bullock reverting firmly to rom-com type in an uninspired and formulaic tale.
Something had to change to reignite the spark that spurred her to superstardom in the first place, with what turned out to be an Academy Award-winning part coming along at exactly the right time. The only obstacle to clear – which was a big one – was that Bullock had no interest in signing on for The Blind Side after Julia Roberts had turned it down.
“I didn’t trust it,” she admitted to Entertainment Weekly. “I thought it would be schmaltzy and soft.” It very much was in its finished form, but The Blind Side nonetheless did a sterling job of rehabilitating Bullock’s A-list status by winning her the biggest acting prize in the business, while the release of her return to rom-com territory in The Proposal just five months previously indicated that she still had what it took to be a drawing card for the moviegoing audience.
In a fateful sign of what could have happened had her 2009 double-whammy not existed, sandwiched in between The Proposal and The Blind Side was All About Steve, the wretched rom-com she also produced. For her efforts, Bullock was rewarded with a Golden Raspberry Award for ‘Worst Actress’, and she showed up to collect it in person just 24 hours before she took the stage to grab her Oscar.
