Sandra Bullock’s first brush with the dark side of Hollywood: “I was smart enough to not trust those people”
Hollywood has always been known for exploiting those at the bottom rung of the ladder, whether it be crew members, assistants or emerging actors. Countless horror stories have trickled through the industry about young actors who are eager to get ahead and find themselves in dangerous situations with casting directors or studio executives, sometimes signing dodgy contracts or being treated poorly by those with power during their climb to the top. It’s a very risky business to be involved with, with countless curveballs that could either make you or break you, something that Sandra Bullock experienced at a young age after her breakout role.
After years of collaborations, Mike Nichols and Elaine May honed a perfectly satirical and heart-warming comedic style that somehow managed to translate, no matter how dark or silly the story was. Whether it be The Graduate, The Birdcage or The Heartbreak Kid, you can see traces of their joint style in their collective filmographies, something that is also evident in Nichols’ 1988 film Working Girl, which follows an ambitious secretary who takes over the role of the top executive at her company.
It was the kind of comedy that distinctly reflected the sign of the times and appealed to a lost generation of twenty-somethings who were floundering in their professional lives, creating a bizarre story in which someone actually manages to succeed against all the odds. As a result, it was later adapted for television, with Bullock being cast in the lead role and marking the beginning of her rise to fame.
However, while it was a big break for Bullock, she had many disturbing experiences in the buildup to finding this role, with Bullock describing her early brushings with the industry and how Working Girl didn’t quite prove to be the experience she hoped for.
Before being cast on the show, she was acting in smaller projects in the hopes of booking something bigger, with one production even insisting that she shoot a scene while partially nude. But Bullock knew to be wary of this behaviour, and cleverly insisted on taping duct tape to her body to avoid being captured completely naked by the camera.
Bullock explained, “I was young and inexperienced, but I was still smart enough to not trust those people”.
After this, she found herself in another shit situation after being cast in Working Girl, saying, “It was miserable; I was terrible and was getting blamed for it not being funny. But the problem was that there were so many cooks involved. I remember thinking – just give me funny stuff to do, because what you’re giving me isn’t funny. They didn’t know what to do with me and I didn’t know how to fix it.”
Hollywood is a murky and dangerous place, especially for young women who have continuously been abused and exploited by the system. While Bullock found herself in a number of incredibly uncomfortable situations and was treated as the scapegoat for the failure of her first big role, she managed to keep her wits about her and came out the other side relatively unscathed.
