With a considerable box office draw and several prestigious accolades including an Academy Award to her credit, American actress Sandra Bullock is one of the few women in Hollywood to break through the glass ceiling and establish a niche of her own in the industry. In a career spanning over three decades, the celebrated artist has appeared in around 50 feature films and a handful of tv shows, besides venturing into production as well. She is perhaps best known for her performances in movies like Speed (1994), Miss Congeniality (2000), The Proposal (2009), Gravity (2013) and The Blind Side (2009) - the last of which won her an Oscar for Best Actress that year.
Bullock started out in the late 1980s, debuting in cinema with the action thriller Hangmen (1987) and on television with Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). Subsequently, the actress got her first big break courtesy of the sci-fi action comedy Demolition Man (1993), which starred Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes in the lead roles. However, it was the 1994 action thriller Speed which turned Bullock into a force to be reckoned with at the box office. Made at a budget of $30 million, Speed grossed over $350 million in the course of its theatrical run, besides receiving critical acclaim. In the years that followed, Bullock continued to dominate the box office through hits like While You Were Sleeping (1995), The Net (1995) and A Time to Kill (1996).
In 2000, the actress starred in the action comedy Miss Congeniality, which told the story of an FBI agent who goes undercover as a beauty pageant contestant in a bid to avert a catastrophe at the event. Despite the mixed critical reception, the film went on to gross over $200 million at the box office, reasserting Bullock's credentials as a bankable star. The romantic comedy Two Weeks Notice (2002), the Academy Award-winning drama film Crash (2004), the romantic comedy The Proposal (2009) and the biographical sports drama The Blind Side (2009) were some of her other notable acting credits from the decade. While The Proposal (2009) grossed over a whopping $300 million at the box office, Bullock's portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy - the foster mother of American footballer Michael Oher - in The Blind Side (2009) won her the first Oscar in her illustrious career.
The buddy cop action comedy The Heat (2013), the sci-fi thriller Gravity (2013) and the comedy-drama Our Brand is Crisis (2015) are among Bullock's other significant works in recent times. In 2018, she starred alongside an ensemble cast featuring Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter in the heist comedy Ocean's 8, a spin-off from the Ocean's Trilogy directed by Steven Soderbergh. The film opened to positive reviews, and was a box office success.