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From Speed (94, Jan De Bont) to Speed 2: Cruise
Control (97, De Bont), Sandra Bullock went from
$500,000 a picture to $12.5 million. All this, of
course, in a society where, famously, you are
worth whatever you get. Though possibly some
relic remains of an earlier culture which—while
liking Ms. Bullock well enough—could reckon
tht $500,000 was generous for her Annie Porter
in that first Speed. Would it amaze you to hear the
proposal that 500,000 young women in America
could have done as well in the part? Or am I missing the point?
As I said, I like Ms. Bullock: she is fun, tomboyish, observant, and pretty. But she has
become a business, her own production company,
and what is called a national favorite. So be it—but, as I go through the list, I defy you to be quite sure which film was which.
She is the daughter of a German opera singer,
Helga Bullock, and as a child the family traveled
widely, following the mother's career. Sandra can
sing, too. She was educated at Washington-Lee
High School, and then briefly at East Carolina
University before she went into acting. She did
some TV and she had the lead role (the Melanie Griffith part)
in a short-lived TV series, Working
Girl (90). Her first significant movie was When the Party's Over (92, Matthew Irmas), followed by
Demolition Man (93, Marco Brambilla); Wrestling
Ernest Hemingway (93, Randa Haines); The Vanishing (93, George Sluizer); The Thing Called
Love (93, Peter Bogdanovich), and then Speed.
That was followed with While You Were Sleeping (95, Jon Turteltaub), her first vehicle; The Net (95, Irwin Winkler); Two if by Sea (96, Bill Bennett); A Time to Kill (96, Joel Schumacher); seriously out of her depth as Hemingway's girl in In
Love and War (96, Richard Attenborough); and
then Speed 2.
For Hope Floats (98, Forest Whitaker), she was
co-executive producer; with Nicole Kidman in
Practical Magic (98, Griffin Dunne); the voice of
Miriam on The Prince of Egypt (98); Forces of
Nature (99, Bronwen Hughes); Gun Shy (00, Eric
Blakeney), which she produced; 28 Days (00,
Betty Thomas); a comeback in Miss Congeniality
(00, Donald Petrie); Murder by Numbers (02,
Barbet Schroeder); Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya
Sisterhood (02, Gallic Khouri).
And so the girl next door is now fortysomething, a
household name, but not yet in a single vital
movie.
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Sandra Bullock
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