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Sandra Bullock has dazzled the world with her talents since the early ’90s. If you’re like me, you likely know the Oscar-winning actor from her blockbuster hits like Miss Congeniality and The Proposal, or—if you’re one of my Gen Alpha nieces—she might be most familiar as the mom from Bird Box.
Regardless, the star has always made her mark onscreen one way or the other. So for her birthday, here’s a list of things you might not know—but probably should—about Sandra Bullock.
Bullock told Wired that although her father was a voice teacher and her mother was an opera singer, she unfortunately doesn’t have their pipes. “They say it skips a generation,” Bullock joked. “My daughter can sing beautifully.”
The star told Wired that she begrudgingly took piano lessons for 12 years and “hated every minute of it.” She also mentioned in her 2010 Oscar acceptance speech that she took ballet.
Although Bullock was born in Virginia, she grew up between Germany and Washington, D.C. As a child, she spoke fluent German and traveled around the country with her mother until finally settling down in the States in her adolescent years.
As the founder of Fortis Films—the production company that produced Miss Congeniality 1 and 2, Hope Floats, and Two Weeks Notice—Bullock was trying to uplift Latinx talent when she discovered comedian George Lopez. In 2016, Lopez recounted their meeting at an improv show after Bullock drove an hour and a half to see him perform.
Bullock advocated for Lopez’s show George Lopez before going on to produce the hit sitcom, which ran for six seasons on ABC. She occasionally guest-starred on the show as Accident Amy, a character prone to hurting herself on the job.
Bullock opened Walton’s Fancy and Staple as a hybrid bakery-cafe-restaurant-flower shop in Austin’s Market District in 2009. (It was originally established as Walton’s Florist and Nursery in 1969.) The five-star-rated establishment serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sweet bakery treats, besides also selling fresh flowers.
After being asked if her distance from social media had anything to do with her role as a computer programmer who gets her identity erased in the 1995 film The Net, Bullock told SiriusXM, “You just unearthed the social gem…that no one’s asked me, so I figured they didn’t want to know. I learned a lot. We met real hackers.”
“I think about how sweet Keanu Reeves was and how handsome,” Bullock told Ellen DeGeneres in a 2018 interview. While the two worked on Speed, she had a giggle-inducing crush on her costar, though the two never dated.
A few months later, Reeves followed Bullock’s confession with one of his own. “She obviously didn’t know I had a crush on her either,” he said on The Ellen Show, earning a few gasps and squeals from the audience.
