Sandra Bullock Wants to Be Buried in Her High School Cheerleading Uniform
Sandra Bullock in a Valentino top, Céline trousers, Ana Khouri earring (worn in right ear), and Dior earring (worn in left ear). Photo: Matt Irwin for Glamour
Sandra Bullock has a lot of adoring fans — there’s a reason why she was Hollywood’s highest paid actress in 2014 — but her biggest admirer isn’t her son, daughter, or stalker, it’s Zoe Kazan, her co-star in the upcoming political thriller Our Brand Is Crisis. Bullock appears on the cover of Glamour magazine’s November issue and Kazan, playing the smart assistant to the 51-year-old’s power political consultant, was given the opportunity to interview one of the kindest people she’s ever met.
Turns out, Bullock is precisely the person off screen that you expect her to be: the aforementioned kind, but also funny, generous, and someone who listens to others with her entire self, as Kazan puts it. Bullock’s sense of being even inspired Kazan. “After spending time with Sandy, I now have a new standard of how to conduct myself, not just at work but also in life,” the 32-year-old wrote. The pair sat down the day after the premiere of their movie at the Toronto International Film Festival and while Kazan has respected the fact that Bullock likes to keep her personal private, she jumped at the opportunity to ask one of her heroes everything she “always wanted to know but was too shy to ask.”
Sandra Bullock on Glamour’s November cover wearing a coat from The Row and a Dior earring. Photo: Matt Irwin for Glamour
Like any good journalist, Kazan knew the key to loosen a subject up is flattery and she lays it on right off the bat by telling Sandy that if she wasn’t a movie star, she’d be the rock of a small town. To that, Bullock admitted she always thought she’d be the oldest waitress around who knew everybody. “I liked the idea of making everyone feel comfortable because it makes me feel more comfortable. I’m oddly an introvert. Because of that aspect of my personality, I like the idea of taking care of the team—hoping that someone will, eventually, take care of me back,” the Miss Congeniality actress admitted. Bullock still even has cheerleading uniform from her high school days in Arlington, Virginia. “Embarrassingly, yes. That might come in handy some sexy night. I don’t know who I’m saving it for. I want to be buried in it.”
Despite being shy, Bullock’s a bull when it comes to business and is actually a take-charge, independent woman who’s forged a career unparalleled to her Hollywood peers. For example, her role in Our Brand Is Crisis was originally written for a man and she asked the producers to make a gender switch for her. “It wasn’t one of those things where you go, “Hmm, how do we change it to a woman?” You just change the sex; that was pretty much it,” she said. “She’s human. She deals with addiction; she deals with mental illness. She’s brilliant at what she does, and she gets lost in the fact that all she cares about is a win.” This is a lesson she doesn’t necessarily want to pass on to her son, Louis. “How do you raise a child to not make it all about the win when all we see in our world is people saying, “In order to have success, you have to win”?”
Sandra Bullock in a red Narcisco Rodriguez jumpsuit and Dior earring. Photo: Matt Irwin for Glamour
Becoming a parent (and getting divorced) actually helped Bullock become an adult, which she said she didn’t feel like she’d developed into until a few years ago. “I had to step back and go, ‘I have the greatest gift in little Louis, and I’m gonna let him see the woman I want him to know.’ So a child forces you to get your sh-t together. In the best way.” No matter how
Louis has actually clarified her thoughts on rights for individuals in the United States today. “I want my son to be safe. I want my son to be judged for the man he is. We are at a point now where if we don’t do something, we will have destroyed what so many amazing people have done,” she told Kazan. “You look at women’s rights; it’s turning into a mad, mad world out there. But sometimes it needs to get really loud for people to say, ‘I can’t unsee this.’
In fact, if Bullock could ride in a bubble with her family, hiding them from the paparazzi, forever, she would. “I’ve always been insanely private. When I [first] stepped into this, it was still loud. The tabloids were violating. I went, ‘How can people write that?’ I spent a year and a half, two years, distraught, saying, ‘You can’t say these lies.’ I spent years fighting battles you can’t win. As loud as it’s gotten now, it’s the same panic,” she said. “As much as I profess to being able to shut it out, there are times I can’t, like when it’s hurtful to people I care about. Me, I get it. But when it hurts other people? Like, you come after my son, I’m gonna go postal. But they do.”
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