<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Sandra Bullock bursts through the door of a Starbucks in Austin, Texas, her hair and clothes covered with a sprinkling of dust. &amp;quot;I know, I know, I&amp;#x27;m the portrait of beauty,&amp;quot; she says, laughing. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve been working with the construction guys at this little bistro I&amp;#x27;m about to open. Today we&amp;#x27;ve been in the men&amp;#x27;s bathroom setting up this vintage fifties urinal. I want the men who come to my place to have a really big urinal so that no matter where they hit, they get it in.&amp;quot; She laughs again, louder this time, causing the other customers to turn and openly gawk, their faces a combination of fascination and bewilderment--a look she knows all too well. At the age of 42, after more than a decade as one of Hollywood&amp;#x27;s most consistently successful A-list actresses, Bullock continues to surprise almost everyone: A couple of years ago, she walked away from her trademark movie roles--flirtatious heroines in romantic comedies--in order to take on smaller roles in more serious films, a decision that led to rave reviews for her portrayal of the embittered wife of a district attorney in Crash, and Oscar buzz this year for her performance as novelist Harper Lee in Infamous, the second film in as many years based on Truman Capote&amp;#x27;s In Cold Blood. Then, in July 2005, despite her oft-stated wariness about marriage, she wedded the very tattooed, Popeye-muscled Jesse James, host of Monster Garage, a cable TV show devoted to custom cars and choppers. But it&amp;#x27;s not just her determination to keep moving forward, professionally and personally, that makes Bullock a Glamour Woman of the Year. For years she has been a devoted philanthropist. After September 11, 2001, she wrote a million-dollar check to the American Red Cross to help victims of the terrorist attacks, and she wrote another million-dollar check to the Red Cross to help relief efforts in Asian countries affected by the 2004 tsunami. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, she was often seen at the Austin convention center, helping evacuees get food, clothing and shelter. And most recently, Bullock has been a financial force behind the creation of the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in Austin (named after former Texas governor Ann Richards, who died of esophageal cancer in September; it&amp;#x27;s set to open in 2007) and the rebuilding of the Warren Easton Senior High School in New Orleans&amp;#x27; inner city. One of her new mantras, she says, is GET EDUCATED--the slogan on her new favorite T-shirt; she&amp;#x27;s wearing it here. Although the actress&amp;#x27;s gift of gab is legendary--she races from one thought to another, cutting herself off in the midst of one sentence to start another--her philanthropy is one topic she&amp;#x27;s uncomfortable discussing. When asked about her charity work, she says, &amp;quot;I hate talking about this&amp;quot;--a sign of just how different a celebrity she is. GLAMOUR: So you really don&amp;#x27;t like talking to the media about the charities you get involved with? Sandra Bullock: No. It&amp;#x27;s none of their business. I don&amp;#x27;t want to be seen as the kind of person who does things and then expects publicity in return. I look at it as, I happen to have the means, I have the energy and I have the passion to do what I want to do. GLAMOUR: Well then, do you ever think about telling your publicist, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t let anyone know I&amp;#x27;ve just written a million-dollar check to the Red Cross?&amp;quot; Sandra Bullock: Oh, the publicist is the last one to know. When it comes to the charity stuff, the poor woman knows nothing. And most of the time nothing gets out. I tell people, &amp;quot;I prefer to let this sit. I&amp;#x27;d rather no name be attached. But if you absolutely need the publicity to bring some awareness--to make someone say, &amp;#x27;Instead of going to Starbucks today, I&amp;#x27;m going to take that three dollars and plunk it into something that helps&amp;#x27;--then use it.&amp;quot; GLAMOUR: Tell us about the GET EDUCATED T-shirt. Sandra Bullock: One day I was standing around with a bunch of young girls, and one of them was talking about how she didn&amp;#x27;t think she was smart enough to do what she wanted with her life. I said to her, &amp;quot;You are 11 years old. You can do anything you want to do.&amp;quot; I find that with some girls, the words work and education have gotten a bad rap. GLAMOUR: If there is one woman you would suggest these young girls look to as a role model, who would it be? Sandra Bullock: After Ann Richards died, people said to me, &amp;quot;I had heard about her, but I didn&amp;#x27;t really know about her.&amp;quot; So I said, &amp;quot;Let me do you a favor.&amp;quot; I printed out all her speeches I could find, all the way back to the Democratic Convention in 1988, and said, &amp;quot;Read about that mind, that humor, that energy. See what made her such a saucy, fantastic woman.&amp;quot; She really was a force to be reckoned with. She broke barriers with laughter, humor and intelligence, and that is a philosophy worth carrying on. GLAMOUR: You were in New York City on 9/11 and you saw one of the Twin Towers come down. People have said that experience changed you, the way you thought about life. Sandra Bullock: Nothing was more powerful than seeing that city bond together within seconds: people of all races, from all neighborhoods. I&amp;#x27;ve never seen people come together so quickly. And I&amp;#x27;ve been asking myself, why can&amp;#x27;t we do the same thing for New Orleans? I want everyone to ask themselves, why hasn&amp;#x27;t New Orleans been given the same support? Why? GLAMOUR: OK, why? Sandra Bullock: There is a perception that New Orleans has no business and is filled with people who have little money--so no one cares. I don&amp;#x27;t get that elitist thinking. Half of my family has a deep-rooted connection to the South and Louisiana, and for me, New Orleans is one of our most precious, historic communities: visually, emotionally, artistically. GLAMOUR: How did you get involved with rebuilding the high school there? Sandra Bullock: I have friends in New Orleans and I said, &amp;quot;We need to get a school up and running in a part of town that is being ignored.&amp;quot; At last count, 790 students came back in September. If we educate these kids now, they can lead New Orleans later. GLAMOUR: Something else seemed to happen to you right after 9/11. You were at the top of your career, filming one hit film after another (among them, Miss Congeniality and Two Weeks Notice), and Hollywood producers were clamoring to sign you to their next big romantic comedy and you suddenly said no. Sandra Bullock: There is a tendency in this business to stay on the gerbil wheel and keep working--in large part because you are afraid of not working. And I was hardwired for that manic activity. My stomach was eating at me, and I was waking up in the middle of the night and making lists. Then I watched 9/11 happen. I watched the second tower fall. I saw bodies. And I thought, what is this telling us? I literally said, out loud and in public, that I will no longer be doing a certain type of film and that I am also taking some time off. GLAMOUR: What happened then? Sandra Bullock: I went cold turkey. I spent a year by myself, weaning myself off the desire to go do something. GLAMOUR: But you eventually returned to Hollywood. Sandra Bullock: But not to that same place. I made a shift toward how I was going to live in this world and what I was going to leave having done. GLAMOUR: Well, you certainly made one big shift: getting married. You used to say marriage was not a very big deal to you. Sandra Bullock: It never was. I wasn&amp;#x27;t one of those people who dreamed about the white dress. GLAMOUR: You went so far as to say that marriage was a goofy institution. Sandra Bullock: And I still think it is if you set it up as this institution with a predetermined set of rules. It&amp;#x27;s unhealthy to have a predisposed expectation of what you think a marriage should be--as this thing at the end of the rainbow. False expectations take away joy. GLAMOUR: Supposedly after you met Jesse, he kept e-mailing you, wanting to go to dinner, and you kept saying no, he wasn&amp;#x27;t the type of guy you date. True? Sandra Bullock: I did to him what most people do to me: I took in some information about him, assimilated it and spit out a judgment. GLAMOUR: So when did the revelation hit you that this was the man you wanted to spend the rest of your life with? Sandra Bullock: There was no revelation. There was just ease. Everything fell into step. I woke up one day and realized something was in tune with me and I was in tune with something else. And I&amp;#x27;ve become a better version of myself. GLAMOUR: At 42, do you hear a clock ticking in terms of your career? Sandra Bullock: No, I&amp;#x27;ve been fortunate in that my career has not been based on the way I look. You don&amp;#x27;t go, &amp;quot;Ooh, Sandra Bullock, sexpot, saucy vixen.&amp;quot; My roles have gotten better. I have seven or eight projects going. It was an honor to play Harper Lee, a woman who chose a more dignified, quiet, profound way of life. GLAMOUR: Speaking of Harper Lee, how did it feel to, for the first time, play someone around 40, basically your own age? Sandra Bullock: I don&amp;#x27;t know how to answer that; it&amp;#x27;s a stupid question. GLAMOUR: It&amp;#x27;s not a stupid question. It&amp;#x27;s a good question; lots of people get to a point in their forties where they&amp;#x27;re thinking, is this it? What&amp;#x27;s next? Sandra Bullock: Everything is next. But I&amp;#x27;ve never looked at a role as an age, unless I&amp;#x27;m playing 70 or 13. You play from emotion, circumstance, experience. GLAMOUR: OK. But you hear lots of older actresses complain about lack of roles. So if a producer came to you and said, &amp;quot;I want you as my leading actress. But I just need you to get a little plastic surgery....&amp;quot; Sandra Bullock: I wouldn&amp;#x27;t do it. Period. You won&amp;#x27;t find one woman in our family, not a one, who would consider plastic surgery, and I&amp;#x27;m telling you, I have a family of the sexiest, smartest, funniest, most beautiful set of women. As my 80-year-old Aunt Luddy says, &amp;quot;If you&amp;#x27;re 80, and you live your life like you&amp;#x27;re 80, then you&amp;#x27;ll look 80. If you&amp;#x27;re 80, and you live your life like you&amp;#x27;re 50, then you&amp;#x27;ll look 50.&amp;quot; Aunt Luddy looks 45. I&amp;#x27;m not saying, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t condone plastic surgery.&amp;quot; But if you do it, then do it well, make sure you come out looking like yourself. You&amp;#x27;re comfortable being put under a knife and being disemboweled? Great! GLAMOUR: If you could, would you change anything about your life so far? Sandra Bullock: I have been blessed with a really great time and great love and great laughter and fun and experiences, and I would do it all over again exactly the same way--the same timing, the same mistakes--so that I could be right back here again, sitting at Starbucks!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2006/10/sandra-bullock/3>