Sandra Annette Bullock ( born July 26, 1964) is an American actress and producer. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, Bullock was the world's highest-paid actress in 2010 and 2014. In 2010, she was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world. After making her acting debut with a minor role in the thriller Hangmen (1987), Bullock received early attention for her supporting role in the action film Demolition Man (1993). Her breakthrough in the action thriller Speed (1994) led to leading roles in the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995), and the dramas A Time to Kill (1996) and Hope Floats (1998). She achieved further success in the following decades with the comedies Miss Congeniality (2000), Two Weeks Notice (2002), The Proposal (2009), The Heat (2013), Ocean's 8 (2018), and The Lost City (2022); the dramas Crash (2004) and The Unforgivable (2021); and the thrillers Premonition (2007) and Bird Box (2018). For her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy in the biographical drama The Blind Side (2009), Bullock won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was nominated for the same award for playing an astronaut stranded in space in the science fiction thriller Gravity (2013), which ranks as her highest-grossing live-action film. In addition to acting, Bullock is the founder of the production company Fortis Films. She has produced some of the films in which she has starred, including Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005) and All About Steve (2009), and served as an executive producer on the ABC sitcom George Lopez (2002–2007), on which she made numerous appearances. Dubbed "America's sweetheart" by the media, Bullock was also named the Most Beautiful Woman by People magazine in 2015. Bullock was born on July 26, 1964, in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington County, Virginia, the daughter of Helga Mathilde (née Meyer; 1942–2000), an opera singer and voice teacher from Germany, and John Wilson Bullock (1925–2018), an Army employee and part-time voice coach from Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, who was in charge of the Army's Military Postal Service in Europe, was stationed in Nuremberg when he met her mother. Her parents married in Germany. Bullock's maternal grandfather was a German rocket scientist from Nuremberg. The family returned to Arlington, where her father worked with the Army Materiel Command before becoming a contractor for The Pentagon. Bullock has a younger sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, who served as president of Bullock's production company Fortis Films.] For 12 years, Bullock was raised in Nuremberg, Germany, and Vienna and Salzburg, Austria, and grew up speaking German. She had a Waldorf education in Nuremberg.As a child, while her mother went on European opera tours, Bullock usually stayed with her aunt Christl and cousin Susanne, the latter of whom later married politician Peter Ramsauer. Bullock studied ballet and vocal arts as a child and frequently accompanied her mother, taking small parts in her opera productions. In Nuremberg, she sang in the opera's children's choir. Bullock has a scar above her left eye which was caused by a fall into a creek when she was a child. While she maintains her American citizenship, Bullock applied for German citizenship in 2009. Bullock attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was a cheerleader and performed in school theater productions. After graduating in 1982, she attended East Carolina University (ECU) in Greenville, North Carolina, where she received a BFA in Drama in 1987. While at ECU, she performed in multiple theater productions, including Peter Pan and Three Sisters. She then moved to Manhattan, New York, where she supported herself as a bartender, cocktail waitress, and coat checker while auditioning for roles. While in New York, Bullock took acting classes with Sanford Meisner. She appeared in several student films and later landed a role in an Off-Broadway play No Time Flat. Director Alan J. Levi was impressed by Bullock's performance and offered her a part in the made-for-television film Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). This led to her being cast in a series of small roles in several independent films, as well as in the lead role of the short-lived NBC television version of the film Working Girl (1990). She went on to appear in several films, such as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), The Thing Called Love (1993) and Fire on the Amazon (1993), before rising to early prominence with her supporting role in the sci-fi action film Demolition Man (1993). Bullock's breakthrough came in 1994, when she played Annie Porter, a passenger eventually driving a bus that was rigged by a terrorist, in the smash-hit blockbuster Speed alongside Keanu Reeves. She was required to read for Speed to ensure that there was the right chemistry between her and Reeves. She recalls they had to do "all these really physical scenes together, rolling around on the floor and stuff." Speed received critical acclaim, with Rotten Tomatoes calling it a "terrific popcorn thriller [with] outstanding performances from Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, and Sandra Bullock", grossed $350 million worldwide, and helped establish Bullock as a Hollywood actress. For her role, she won for Best Actress at the 21st Saturn Awards as well as three awards —including Best Female Performance and Most Desirable Female— at the 1995 MTV Movie Awards. Bullock headlined the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995) as a lonely Chicago Transit Authority token collector who saves the life of a man. The film had a positive reception from critics, who felt that it was "assembled with such skill—and with such a charming performance from Sandra Bullock—that it gives formula a good name." She received her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The thriller The Net (also 1995), starred Bullock as a computer programmer who stumbles upon a conspiracy that puts her life and the lives of those around her in great danger. Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, complimented her performance, saying, "Bullock pulls you into the movie. Her overripe smile and clear, imploring eyes are sometimes evocative of Julia Roberts". While You Were Sleeping and The Net made $182 million and $110.6 million, respectively.