Sandra Bullock

She moved to Manhattan and supported herself as a bartender, cocktail waitress, and coat checker. She later completed her coursework and graduated from East Carolina University.

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 TV movie Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989). Afterward, she was 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 later appeared in several films, such as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), The Thing Called Love (1993) and Fire on the Amazon. A prominent supporting role in the science-fiction/action movie Demolition Man (1993) led to her breakthrough performance in Speed the following year. She became a movie star in the late 1990s, carrying a string of successes, including While You Were Sleeping, and Miss Congeniality in 2000. Bullock received $11 million for Speed 2: Cruise Control, which she agreed to star in for financial backing for her own project, Hope Floats, and has revealed she regrets making the sequel. She later received $17.5 million for Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous. Read Less