The movie that makes Sandra Bullock want to apologise
The iconic American actor Sandra Bullock may not hold the cultural significance she once did, but there’s no doubt that she remains one of the most beloved actors in recent Hollywood history. A modest star who’s always been humble in her fame, Bullock has had the opportunity to feature in some of the biggest movies of modern cinema, working with such filmmakers as Alfonso Cuarón, Joel Schumacher, Richard Attenborough, Paul Feig and Stephen Daldry.
Hitting the industry in the late 1980s, Bullock found major success about a decade after her arrival, appearing in the action movies Demolition Man and Speed in 1993 and 1994, respectively. Bullock’s collaboration with Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper in the excellent Speed would elevate her industry profile, helping her to achieve a starring role in 1995’s The Net and a supporting part in Schumacher’s A Time to Kill with Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey.
The actor’s good fortunes continued into the 21st century when she would star in the 2000 comedy Miss Congeniality, a beloved film that follows an FBI agent who goes undercover in a major beauty pageant to prevent a terrorist attack. Creeping into the history books of pop culture, the movie co-starred the likes of Michael Caine, William Shatner and Ernie Hudson and earned over $200million at the box office from a budget of just $45m.
Released during the infancy of Bullock’s Hollywood career, the star calls the film “a blur, because I didn’t have my family then”. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Netflix for the release of The Unforgivable in 2021, the actor and producer of the 2000 film added: “Work was my family. I was a working actor, New York City worker. You take anything that comes your way, and you just make the best of it. Miss Congeniality was sort of my first big producing job”.
Continuing, the actor stated: “It just felt right to make that film. For those girls that didn’t have the ingénue in them, like I didn’t have the ingénue in me when I was looking at films. You know, I was basically playing myself and who I wished had been on screen for me at 14. It’s my daughter’s favourite film, annoyingly so. The stuff that she repeats, I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. I need to apologise to so many parents ’cause now I’m getting it back.’ But it’s physical comedy, and she’s a tomboy, and my daughter is that”.
She might feel like she needs to apologise for Miss Congeniality due to its raunchy nature that pushed the boundaries of comedy at the turn of the new millennium, but it is for this exact reason that Bullock should hold the film proud and sing its praises from the rooftops. Comedy movies with female leads are far too few and far between, and, as the actor explained, she provided a role model for not only her daughter but for thousands of young girls across the world.
Aside from Miss Congeniality, Bullock also holds a significant amount of embarrassment for the 1997 sequel Speed 2: Cruise Control, a film she says: “Makes no sense. Slow boat. Slowly going towards an island”.
