"Happy Birthday!"

Hollywood icon Sandra Bullock turns 60

Sandra Bullock is 60! We wish her a very happy birthday! "Happy Birthday!"

Hollywood icon Sandra Bullock, who has been thrilling audiences for decades, celebrates her 60th birthday on Friday. While she has been focusing on her private life lately, her contributions to the world of film remain unforgotten.

Sandra Bullock has made herself scarce on the big screen, and there are currently no concrete plans for a new project. The actress announced her hiatus from Hollywood in April 2022 in one of her rare interviews. "I want to be home," Bullock told US broadcaster CBS at the time. She could not say how long this break would last. Shortly before that, she had shot two more films.

In the action comedy "The Lost City" (2022), she battles her way through a jungle with Channing Tatum. In the same year, she made a brief appearance alongside Brad Pitt in the thriller "Bullet Train" about a contract killer.

Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in "The Lost City"

(Bild: ©2021 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.)

Mother role more important
In the CBS interview, the mother of two adopted children also raved about her role as a mother and how important family is in her life. Bullock's closest circle at the time included her partner, US photographer Bryan Randall. According to People.com, the Oscar winner and Randall met in January 2015 when he photographed her adopted son Louis' birthday party. That year, Bullock adopted her second child, then three-year-old Laila. In December 2021, she said on the Facebook talk show "Red Table Talk" that she had found the "love of my life" in Randall, with whom she was living together without a marriage license.

By then, Bullock's partner was probably already suffering from the incurable muscle and nerve disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Last August, his family announced the 57-year-old's death. He died after a three-year battle against ALS. It was said that he had decided early on to keep his illness a secret.

Oscar triumph and family dramas
Bullock's family life had already hit the headlines in 2010 when her five-year marriage to TV presenter and motorcycle mechanic Jesse James suddenly collapsed. James was still by her side when she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for the drama "Blind Side" in March of that year, but just a few days later several affairs came to light. Bullock canceled long-planned premiere appearances, including in Berlin, at short notice and filed for divorce.

Professionally, Bullock had long been firmly in the saddle with million-dollar salaries and a full filming schedule. In Hollywood, "Sandy" had a reputation as a sweetheart - down-to-earth and without airs and graces. She could also be won over for comedy, action and drama.

Sandra Bullock in the drama "Blind Side - The Big Chance"

(Bild: mptv / picturedesk.com)

Daughter of German opera singer
Bullock was born in the USA, but grew up in Nuremberg as the daughter of a German opera singer and a singing teacher who was stationed in Bavaria as a US soldier. Her fondness for gummy bears and Nuremberg sausages is well known. She has not forgotten her German either.

During her Oscar appearance in 2010, Bullock thanked her mother Helga, who had died of cancer ten years earlier. She had raised her two daughters (Sandra and her six years younger sister Gesine) to be dutiful and tolerant, she said visibly moved on the world stage. And in almost perfect German, Bullock sent greetings backstage to her relatives in Germany: "I love you, I miss you, and I'll see you very soon. Good night, go to bed, sleep well," said the newly crowned Oscar winner.

Bullock owes her first and only Oscar to date to the social drama "The Blind Side" (2010), in which she plays an upper-class mother who takes a homeless black boy into her family and turns him into a professional football player.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in "Magical Sisters"

(Bild: picturedesk.com/mptv )

Theater since high school
Bullock was already acting at high school and then went on to study acting. Her first theater roles in New York were followed by small appearances in film and television. In 1993, she caught the eye as a policewoman alongside Sylvester Stallone in the science fiction film "Demolition Man". Her first major cinema role came in 1994 with co-star Keanu Reeves in the action hit "Speed". This was followed by other hits such as the love story "While You Were Sleeping..." (1995) and the film adaptation of the John Grisham novel "The Jury" (1996). In "Miss Undercover" (2000), Bullock shone as a policewoman who goes undercover to investigate a beauty pageant. In "Herself is the Bride" (2009), she was the bitchy boss who treats her secretary (Ryan Reynolds) badly before falling in love with him.

Her buddy comedy "Tough Girls" (2013) with Melissa McCarthy also scored big at the box office, topped only by the space drama "Gravity", in which she blasts off into space alongside George Clooney as an astronaut. This earned her her second Oscar nomination.

In the gangster comedy "Ocean's 8" (2018), Bullock sets the tone for an all-female thief ring. In the post-apocalyptic Netflix thriller "Bird Box - Close Your Eyes" (2018), directed by Susanne Bier from Denmark, she plays a mother of two who has to flee from a mysterious threat. Hamburg director Nora Fingscheidt was able to recruit Bullock for the thriller "The Unforgivable" (2021) as a haggard former prison inmate.

"A blended family"
The Hollywood star has a close connection to New Orleans in the US state of Louisiana, where her adopted children come from. Both have African-American roots. In the CBS interview, Bullock spoke tearfully about the fears she had as the mother of a black child who was exposed to more dangers in society. After adopting the then three-year-old Laila from a foster home, Bullock told the US magazine "People" in December 2015 that it initially took a lot of patience and appeasement to bring the children closer together. Laila had brought "pink and glitter" into the house. "My family is blended and diverse, crazy, adorable and supportive," Bullock said. "That's family."