Sandra Bullock: At Home With a Speed Queen

"You mean, which ones did I steal?" she asks. "I took the baton from Demolition Man and I have a heart-shaped ring from Speed. But I keep those things in a closet. That way I can look at them when I feel like it, and if somebody wants to see props from a film, they can pay $3.00 and rent them. From Thing Called Love my wardrobe was so scary that I didn't want to save any of it. That's why I bought this couch instead."

The sofa in question is a huge gold thing with rolled arms and clawed feet that dominates the living room like a life raft in the middle of a big, empty swimming pool. "Me and Sammy [co-star Samantha Mathis] would go antique shopping every spare minute we had. I walked into a store, saw the couch, and knew that I had to have it. But then I didn't want to pay too much for the couch to be shipped here -- I'm a real bargain hunter--so the prop guys brought it back for me." She looks down at the chipped brown legs of the sofa and sadly adds, "But the feet got banged up."

Though this swell house clearly serves as proof that Bullock has arrived, she takes pains to point out that its beauty (for her at least) resides in her having become a hands-on laborer. Nowhere is this more evident than in the rooms where tiles cover the floors. A woman who views tiling as therapy--a few years back, when her career temporarily went south, she retiled much of a West Hollywood rental--Bullock holds out her lye-damaged hands. "I bought all the tiles in Mexico and brought them back in my truck," she explains. "But there were so many that my friends had to walk to the border to keep the car from being weighed down. We rented a U-Haul as soon as we got on the American side."

`From the basement I hear the barking and scratching of Bullock's dogs ("They make phone calls at night when I'm sleeping; I saw it on my bill --976-PUPPY") coalescing with the chirping of backyard birds as dusk descends on chez Bullock. I ask what her plans are for her gardens. "All plants that come here die," she says. "That's why everything the nursery sells me looks like a cactus."

Dead plants or not, this whole place seems like a good, peaceful place to retreat to when the vicissitudes of show biz threaten to get to you. "Hollywood turns on actors every day," she says. "People think you're doing really well because you're appearing in movies on a regular basis, but they have no idea how often somebody doesn't like your work and turns you away. The upside to the rejection is that it makes you work harder and try to prove them wrong. It's good for me, though it can be heartless sometimes." Bullock sighs with resignation, then continues, "But children are mean and high school is a tough place to grow up. That's what Hollywood is -- a big high school. Who's gonna be the prom queen? I see myself as the attendant, the one who gets picked for the court but never the homecoming queen. I am standing in the rain, wearing my long dress, saying, 'Get me out of here, my heels are sinking into the mud.'"

Bullock laughs at her own words. After all, maybe it's not quite that bad--they're talking about a sequel to Speed. And, well, these days at least it's her very own mud.

____________

Michael Kaplan interviewed Paul Rudnick for the November 1993 Movieline.

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