Sandra Bullock

Award-winning actress Sandra Bullock has always been an independent, often tomboyish personality among the fashionable Hollywood elite. Here she explains to Gabrielle Donnelly how her new life as a stepmum out in Texas provides the perfect balance to the glitz of the film industry

Sandra Bullock’s new movie, The Proposal, sees her playing a buttoned-up editor at a New York publishing house, with a demeanour so cold it could freeze a Sunday roast with just one icy blast. The fact that she pulls it off at all is a testament to her acting skill, because in real life, Sandy – as you quickly learn to call her – could not be more different.

She’s a warm, earthy, friendly sort, given to long speeches punctuated with dramatic wavings of the arms and a delighted cackle of a laugh. Yet at 45 and poised at the top of her glamorous profession, a touch of the tomboy hangs about her still. She recently commented that, as fashion icons go, she is far from the league of Sarah Jessica Parker or Nicole Kidman. But, in some ways she is luckier than either of these because, as she points out when we meet on a sunny morning in Beverly Hills, she is in the fortunate position of being able to be as glamorous – or as non-glamorous – as she damn well chooses, whenever she damn well chooses.

“Clothes can be stressful,” she says cheerfully, looking anything but stressed in a black Donna Karan top that shows off her slim, strong figure and flatters her creamy pale skin. “I sometimes feel that if I had a stylist to say, ‘Wear this’ or, ‘Wear that’ and put it out for me every day, then my life would be much easier. I tend to run around in jeans and t-shirts when I’m at home, because I’m always doing things that make me dirty. But I love fashion and couture as well, so when I do interviews I get to indulge my girlie-girl side, which is fun too.”

Sandra has marched to her own drumbeat since she was a child. The daughter of German-born opera singer Helga Meyer and businessman and part-time vocal coach John Bullock from Alabama, Sandra and her sister, Gesine, were brought up in Germany and America and taught from a very early age to live the way they wanted, rather than the way society told them to.

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