Sandra Bullock on recovering from marriage split: I've been on the floor heartbroken, I didn't know how I was going to stand up

Sandra Bullock on recovering from marriage split: I've been on the floor heartbroken, I didn't know how I was going to stand up

Movie star Sandra Bullock is aware that her latest film role has parallels with her own emotional trauma over the past few years.

In thriller Gravity the actress plays an astronaut whose space shuttle is destroyed â€" leaving her spiralling out of control in the darkness, isolated and frightened.

Sandra’s world blew apart in 2010 when her marriage crumbled amid allegations that her husband, TV star and motorcycle ace Jesse James, had been cheating.

The nightmare unfolded days after Sandra’s career hit the stratosphere when she won a Best Actress Oscar.

Feeling “permanently broken”, she went into hiding.

But after the divorce Sandra, 49, is now back in orbit and shining more brightly than ever â€" thanks to a three-year-old boy called Louis and a 52-year-old actor called George Clooney.

Sandra in The Blind Side

 

“I’ve been on the floor and I’ve been heartbroken,” Sandra explains. “I didn’t know how I was going to stand up. But I just gave it time.

“You don’t think it will pass when you’re in the middle of it, but it does. I’m so lucky to have what I have. I have a beautiful child and friends and family I adore.”

Sandra and Jesse had been going through the adoption process before their marriage broke down.

Afterwards, Sandra continued on her own as a single parent and adopted baby Louis. Now she says the toddler has taught her how to laugh again.

She reveals: “I was OK about being alone but when you have a child everything is about exploration and being around other kids and being out in the world and seeing things.

“So now I see things through his eyes. I haven’t ever gone out and explored and done things before like I have in the last three years.

"I have the best life right now because I’m enjoying every single moment of this amazing human being. I’m learning how to have a good time through him.” There is no man in her life â€" and she says she doesn’t care. The mum-of-one adds: “I’ve got everything I want, and it couldn’t be sweeter, better or more fulfilling.”

Sandra with George Clooney at the Gravity premiere at the 70th Venice International Film Festival

 

Sandra is chatting in a hotel suite shortly before the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Gravity, which she stars in alongside George. They have been close pals for 25 years but, she insists, they never dated.

She says: “We’re basically brother and sister and that’s why we adore each other so much.

“The George of today is the same George he was all those years ago except he was an out of work actor then. He was just as charming, kind and loving and supportive of his friends that he is now. Except now he can buy nicer things.”

She says acting alongside him in Gravity was amazing, adding: “Having George around was like having a life force in the room that reminds you not to take everything too serious.”

However, she spent hours being filmed on her own.

She says: “I was locked into a metal harness with a camera rushing at my face and there was nothing around but blackness and silence.

"I was hanging from wires for eight or nine hours at a time.

"Every day was torture but in a weird way it helped the process of being isolated, in pain, frustrated and claustrophobic.”

It is a world away from the many girl-next-door roles she has had since she slipped behind the wheel of Speed’s explosive bus in 1994.

Sandra starred in the film Speed

 

She won her Oscar for another unexpected role â€" playing the woman who gives a future to a troubled American football player in The Blind Side in 2009.

Sandra has an earthy sense of humour with a hearty laugh and enjoys making fun of herself.

She may look like a typical all-American girl but Sandra and her sister Gesine had an unusual upbringing as the daughters of an opera singing German mum and a voice coach dad from the US.

Every year the girls stayed with relatives in Germany and attended school. Both sisters are bilingual.

Sandra with ex-husband Jesse James who she divorced in 2010

 

Sandra made her first stage appearances as an extra in her mum’s operas but it was after leaving college in the US that her career took off.

Following TV work, Sandra landed a role alongside Sly Stallone in Demolition Man in 1993. And she’s been in demand ever since.

But her most important role is as a mum. She says: “I choose to do what’s best for Louis. I don’t do anything selfishly for myself any more.”

And despite her new film, her feet are firmly planted.

She says: “Would I like to go into space? No. Maybe I’d do it when I’m old and have done everything else on this planet.

"But right now I’m very happy here.”