Sandra Bullock spent her childhood singing in a Nuremberg opera choir
Before Speed made her famous, Sandra Bullock spent twelve years in Germany and Austria, speaking German and trailing her opera-singer mother on tour. Back in New York she tended bar and checked coats between auditions. She later took $11 million for a sequel she disliked simply to get her next project, Hope Floats, financed.
Bullock was born in Arlington County, Virginia, on July 26, 1964. Her mother, Helga Meyer, was a German opera singer and voice teacher; her father, John Bullock from Alabama, ran the Army's military post in Europe and met Helga while stationed in Nuremberg. Sandra had a Waldorf schooling there, lived in Vienna and Salzburg, studied ballet and voice, and picked up small roles in her mother's productions. A scar over her left eye comes from falling into a creek as a child. In 2009 she applied for German citizenship while keeping her American one.
After high school in Arlington, where she cheered and acted, she earned a drama degree from East Carolina University in 1987, then moved to Manhattan. Classes with Sanford Meisner and an Off-Broadway part in No Time Flat caught the eye of director Alan J. Levi, who cast her in a 1989 television reunion of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman. Small films followed, then a supporting part in Demolition Man.
Speed in 1994 changed everything. She had to read with Keanu Reeves to prove the chemistry, and the bus thriller took $350 million worldwide. While You Were Sleeping, in which she played a lonely Chicago transit token collector, brought her first Golden Globe nomination; it made $182 million. Not every bet paid: Speed 2 flopped and she later spoke badly of it, and Practical Magic topped its opening weekend yet still lost money.
Comedy remained her strongest suit. Miss Congeniality, where an FBI agent goes undercover at a beauty pageant, grossed $212 million, and its sequel paid her $17.5 million. She also backed the sitcom George Lopez as executive producer, earning an award for widening opportunities for Hispanic performers. Her Oscar came for The Blind Side (2009), playing Leigh Anne Tuohy, and Gravity, as a stranded astronaut, became her biggest live-action hit. She was the highest-paid actress in the world in both 2010 and 2014.
Source: Sandra Bullock
