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Sun 27 October 2024 20:15, UK
Starting her career in the late 1980s with Hangmen and Who Shot Pat?, Sandra Bullock came to prominence in the 1990 featuring in a number of thrillers, notably the Keanu Reeves’ led Speed, and its non-Keanu-led sequel, Speed 2: Cruise Control, and continued to be a mainstay of Hollywood during the 2000s, bouncing around genre and making herself one of the most popular actors of her generation.
Her long-standing friendship with fellow icon of the ‘90s and 2000s, George Clooney, is well recorded, but it wouldn’t be until 2013’s Gravity that would see the two actors working together. The film would see the two actors demonstrate their ability to hold a tense audience with their portrayal of two astronauts stuck orbiting Earth after a catastrophic accident leaves them stranded.
Having the two heavy-weights finally shown on screen together, and so successfully, could have been the reason that Bullock was able to secure a role that was apparently originally intended for Clooney.
In Our Brand is Crisis, Bullock plays ‘Calamity’ Jane Bodine, an American political advisor to a Bolivian presidential candidate in the early 2000s. Based on the documentary of the same name that was released in 2005, the dramatisation shows a retired strategist (Bullock) pulled back into politics and thrown into a campaign that becomes increasingly ruthless as she struggles with her own inner demons and addiction along with the political opposition she’s up against.
Bullock says her part in the film was “so beautifully written for a man”, specifying that the kind of role that she was playing doesn’t often fall into the gender norms of Hollywood. Although the script didn’t originally have the protagonist as a female part, it was one that piqued her interest.
After her agent suggested an approach of “just reading the scripts” that were being circulated at the time, once they came upon Our Brand is Crisis the idea to ask the writers “if they’re willing to make it a female” instantly came up. It was a question that wasn’t met with any resistance as Bullock was surprised by a response of “we’re cool with it” from the filmmakers.
Despite Our Brand Means Crisis not reaching commercial success, Bullock received praise for her complexity in portraying Bodine, with many calling it one of the best performances of her career. “She’s human. She deals with addiction; she deals with mental illness. She’s brilliant at what she does, and she gets lost in the fact that all she cares about is a win”, the actor would say when talking about how little actually had to materially change for the character to be played by her instead of a male actor like Clooney.
“It wasn’t one of those things where you go, ‘Hmm, how do we change it to a woman?’ You just change the sex; that was pretty much it.” The role can be considered one of Bullock’s best and it would not have come about without Bullock’s tenacity to make it happen.
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