The role Sandra Bullock refused to audition for: “She wouldn’t test”
Auditions are a tedious yet necessary part of an actor’s life. Well, unless you’re a superstar. If they play their cards right, an actor can get to the point where their name and face are so valuable that they’ll get cast without having to read a single line of the script. Sometimes, though, even box officer-toppers are forced to deliver a monologue or two. Just ask Sandra Bullock.
Following the success of movies like Demolition Man, A Time to Kill, and Speed, Bullock became a household name and one of the most recognisable female stars of the era. In the 1990s, she shared the screen with some very famous male counterparts: Wesley Snipes, Robert Duvall, Bill Pullman, Steve Buscemi, and Keanu Reeves. She could have added another name to the list if it had not been for one catch.
Bullock was the preferred choice to appear opposite George Clooney in Steven Soderbergh’s Elmore Leonard adaptation Out of Sight. Jennifer Lopez ended up playing the role of Karen Sisco, a US Marshal who’s on the tail of Clooney’s bank-robbing Jack Foley. According to one particular interview, her co-star had a particular method of choosing who he wanted in his movies.
“One of the smart things George did was to screen-test everybody because he knew he’d had trouble with the women in his movies, where maybe there wasn’t as much chemistry as there could have been,” Lopez told Movieline. This is where she mentioned that Bullock was Universal’s first choice for her part, but apparently, she didn’t want to play ball.
Adding, “George and the director met with her [Bullock], but they were like, ‘If Sandra really wants it, she’s gonna have to test for it.’ She wouldn’t test, and her agent, who is also my agent, supported that. If I was Sandy, I’d say, ‘Well, I’m gonna show them that I can do it. I’ll read with them, make them offer me the part, then make them pay out the ass.'”
At this point, Clooney had already been paired up with some of the best-known female talents of the day. In the ill-fated Batman & Robin, he was seduced by the enchanting Poison Ivy, brought to life by Uma Thurman. That same year, he co-starred with Nicole Kidman in the thriller The Peacemaker and the year before, he’d made the romantic drama One Fine Day alongside Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s hard to imagine that any of these excellent performers did not have chemistry with Clooney, but this is apparently what led to his policy of mandatory screen tests. Although there’s only one common denominator here, so…
She might not have gotten the chance to take in Clooney’s jawline up close, but Bullock didn’t have a bad 1998 by any stretch. She lent her voice to Miriam, a character in DreamWorks’ in-house debut, The Prince of Egypt, and joined George’s old pal Kidman in the cult classic Practical Magic. Unfortunately, Out of Sight is widely regarded as a classic, so she did sort of miss the boat on this one.
Of course, Bullock and Clooney would eventually get their time together in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. They work fantastically in that, so it would have been fascinating to see if they’d have had the same synergy in an entirely different genre over a decade earlier.
