The movie Sandra Bullock called “frustrating, painful and isolating”
It’s easy to forget the influence that Sandra Bullock has had over Hollywood ever since the 1990s, with the iconic industry star having slowed down her output in the 2020s. Working with such filmmakers as Jan de Bont, Joel Schumacher, Paul Haggis and Paul Feig, Bullock is one of the most revered and well-respected actors in contemporary Hollywood, bringing unmatched energy to each one of her performances.
Rising to fame at the start of the 1990s after a number of minor TV roles, Bullock joined Jeff Bridges in the 1993 remake The Vanishing, Sylvester Stallone in the action movie Demolition Man and the iconic star Robert Duvall in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway before she would hit stardom. Indeed, it wasn’t till the release of Speed in 1994, when Bullock starred alongside Keanu Reeves, that she would be considered a true Hollywood icon.
Opening countless doors to further success, Bullock later took on celebrated roles in Schumacher’s A Time to Kill and Donald Petrie’s Miss Congeniality, all whilst turning down chances to appear in such movies as Candyman, Batman Forever and Jurassic Park.
Still, true critical success would come a little further down the line for Bullock, winning an Academy Award for her performance in the 2009 sports movie The Blind Side, where she played a mother who helped nurture the talents of a homeless American football player. Four years later, this critical success would continue, gaining an Oscar nomination for her role in Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 sci-fi epic Gravity.
A staggering feat of technical filmmaking, Gravity was set entirely in space and told the story of two astronauts working together to survive in the empty cosmos after an accident leaves them stranded. Led by Bullock, with a supporting performance from George Clooney, the actor was forced to deliver an emotionally wrought display in order to sell the film as a journey of powerful self-discovery and rebirth.
The effects-heavy flick took almost five years to make and required strict acting from Bullock and Clooney, with the duo spending around ten hours a day inside a tiny mechanical rig that mimicked the size of a space shuttle. All the while, they were being directed by Cuarón via earpiece, making for an entirely draining process.
Speaking about her experience working on the film, she told Rolling Stone back in 2013, “It was just frustrating, painful and isolating… I wanted to kill [producer David Heyman] and Alfonso regularly. So all of your hate, and your anger and your rage, you just give forth in your work and hope it translates on screen”.
Thankfully for Bullock, the film went on to become a pretty massive critical and commercial hit, earning Warner Bros $723.2million from a budget of between $80–130m. If this wasn’t enough, the film later received seven Oscars at the Academy Awards, winning ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Cinematography’, ‘Best Original Score’ and ‘Best Visual Effects’, among other technical awards.
Take a look at the trailer for the 2013 movie below.
