In the brilliant 2013 space drama Gravity, Sandra Bullock plays a marooned astronaut who only narrowly avoids drifting off into space like her co-star George Clooney, never to be seen again.
And back on Earth, following the tragic 2023 death of Bullock’s longtime partner Bryan Randall from the degenerative condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), fans of the Oscar-winning actress will be forgiven for having wondered if they’d ever see her again.
In an almost total disappearing act, Bullock – who has long been a private star and rather more reluctant than many of her peers to put career before family – dropped off the radar after Randall’s death.
Official appearances have dried up while even private sightings are so rare that, when this week the Daily Mail published a snap of her out driving in Los Angeles with 15-year-old son Louis and her poodle Sweetie, it was the first time she’d been photographed in 11 months.
Last December, she was glimpsed at a basketball game between the LA Lakers and the Detroit Pistons.
Meanwhile, the woman who was Hollywood’s highest paid actress in both 2010 and 2014, hasn’t starred in a movie since the 2022 adventure comedy The Lost City.
So what has happened to her?
In lmost total disappearing act, Bullock dropped off the radar after her partner Bryan Randall’s death in 2023 (she’s pictured this week for first time in 11 months)
The woman who was Hollywood’s highest paid actress in both 2010 and 2014, hasn’t starred in a movie since the 2022 . So what has happened to her? (Pictured with Randall in 2018)
It’s more complicated, an insider told the Daily Mail this week, than Bullock, now 61, simply hitting the ‘age wall’ – the invisible barrier that limits an actress’s shelf life in Hollywood. And particularly when that actress is a romantic lead.
The star of Speed, Miss Congeniality and The Blind Side will return to acting, the insider said, but she’s not exactly desperate to do so.
‘Sandra is not silently retired, but it is going to take something very special for her to get back to work,’ said the source. ‘She has a couple of things in the pipeline, but nothing set in stone.
‘When she is back, she’ll do all the interviews, talk about everything she has been going through, but she isn’t ready yet… she’ll return in her own time and on her own terms.’
One of those projects in the pipeline, as was first reported in May, looks to be a thriller that will reunite her with Keanu Reeves, her co-star in 1994’s Speed, the bomb-on-a-bus action movie that propelled her to stardom. (They went on to star together in the less successful 2006 romantic drama The Lake House.)
Given that it’s since emerged that the pair both had secret crushes on each other while filming Speed but never revealed their true feelings, that’s a reunion that could be highly exciting – or just a little awkward.
Next September, Bullock will also reprise her role in the sequel to Practical Magic, the cult-favorite fantasy drama in which she stars alongside Nicole Kidman.
Those who believe Bullock’s current elusiveness is rooted in the loss of model-turned-photographer Bryan Randall – a man she described as the ‘love of my life’ and who she first met when he came to take pictures of her son Louis’s birthday – don’t appear to be wrong.
Although making movies had once been her ‘dream’, after she adopted two young children – Louis in 2010 and Laila in 2015 – and met Randall, again in 2015, her priorities changed, said the insider.
‘When she found Bryan, and became a mom, everything quickly turned into them being the loves of her life – the reason to wake up every day,’ the source said.
‘Sandra had it all, and once she lost Bryan, she had to rethink priorities, and making movies wasn’t the top priority. The time it takes to make them – the time away from family – is a lot to deal with.’
The death of Randall ‘hit her like a Mack truck… a broken heart is something that everyone takes differently, and for Sandra the past few years have been very trying,’ the insider added.
‘Right now, there are some struggles she is still trying to get through, but her kids are really a force for her and getting her through the hard times.’
Bullock was with Randall for eight years before his death, aged 57, following a three-year battle with ALS that the couple kept secret. She described him as a great ‘example’ to her children.
‘I have a partner who’s very Christian,’ she said in 2021. ‘I don’t always agree with him, and he doesn’t always agree with me. But he is an example even when I don’t agree with him.’
‘Sandra is not silently retired, but it is going to take something very special for her to get back to work,’ said a source (pictured with Keanu Reeves in 1994 in Speed)
The death of Randall ‘hit her like a Mack truck… a broken heart is something that everyone takes differently, and for Sandra the past few years have been very trying,’ the insider added.
Bullock, who said that she and Randall didn’t need to get married, had gone through a deeply toxic breakup with motorcycle builder and TV presenter husband Jesse James in 2010 after several women said they’d had affairs with him, prompting James to make a public apology.
After meeting Randall, the actress said in 2021: ‘I am someone who went through the divorce process. I found the love of my life. We share two beautiful children – three children, he’s got his older daughter. It’s the best thing ever.’
Bullock, who by then knew about his condition, went on: ‘I don’t need to be told to be ever-present in the hardest of times. I don’t need to be told to weather a storm with a good man.
‘Think about what kind of parent he would be. Think about what kind of parent you would be. And what if something happened? Would you both be great parents to those children even if you didn’t make it as a couple. Think about the children first.’
Following Randall’s death, Bullock’s sister Gesine paid tribute to how the actress had cared for him as he struggled with his terrible medical condition, which destroys nerve cells, leading to loss of muscle control and bodily function.
‘ALS is a cruel disease,’ she wrote online, ‘but there is some comfort in knowing he had the best of caretakers in my amazing sister and the band of nurses she assembled who helped her look after him in their home.’
There’s been no sign of Bullock looking for new romance. Though last December, sources claimed that, while she felt she could never hope to replace Randall, she was ‘discreetly telling friends that she’s ready to start dating’.
She was photographed with two of those friends – actress Jennifer Aniston and Amanda Anka, wife of actor Jason Bateman – in March last year coming out of the Connecticut clinic of a cosmetic surgeon specializing in ‘facial rejuvenation’.
Bullock has previously tried to shrug off talk of her having had ‘work’ done. After she was seen with a puffy face at the 2018 Oscars, she blamed it on allergies.
Ageing is certainly tough on women in Hollywood. The source close to Bullock said she ‘is now going to select and pick her work more carefully in the future and not just do something for the sake of it, as everything has become more important with Bryan’s passing.’
And, yes, she could be more picky about her movies.
As can happen with actors who veer too sharply into romantic comedy, Bullock has certainly had her share of flops – including the dreadful 1997 sequel Speed 2: Cruise Control, and rom-coms Forces of Nature (1999), Two Weeks Notice (2002) and All About Steve (2009).
Last December, sources claimed that, while she felt she could never hope to replace Randall, she was ‘discreetly telling friends that she’s ready to start dating’. She was photographed with one of those friends – actress Jennifer Aniston – in March last year coming out of the Connecticut clinic of a cosmetic surgeon
But while Bullock was dubbed ‘America’s Sweetheart’ for her reputation as the rom-com queen who was not only pretty but down-to-earth and witty, she has also been praised as ‘gutsy’ for taking risks with roles that were unflattering or challenging.
The latter category certainly includes her decision to make Gravity, surely her best movie, for which she was expected to recreate the weightlessness of space by being thrown around in a parabolic flying plane known as the ‘Vomit Comet’.
In the end, however, the comet wasn’t necessary – the production was filmed on an elaborate set, with Bullock strung up to a dozen wires – but she’d agreed to go in the plane anyway, despite being ‘deathly afraid of flying’ after surviving a plane crash in 2000 in which the jet skidded off the runway.
With the untimely death of her partner, Bullock has suffered another, more devastating crash landing. Her fans are now hoping she will find the strength to overcome this one, too.