BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- There was a time when actress Sandra Bullock longed to be like everybody else. She had shuttled between Europe and the United States most of her life; her mom was an opera singer, her dad a vocal coach.
"I wished I had more sedate parents. My parents are very irreverent and very original and very brave and great artists," says Bullock, sitting on the edge of a striped couch in a hotel room, her straight, brown hair askew."When I came back to the States, then I wanted them to be the same. . . . I wanted my parents to be Martha Stewart. I'd say, 'Mom, why can't you wear espadrilles and monograms like everyone else?' "
For a while, Bullock tried to conform herself. But she soon got over that idea. "I realized what I was doing, which was copying and forcing myself into a category that didn't need anybody else."
Dressed in black designer pants that lace up on each side, a black hooded and zippered jacket and a T-shirt, Bullock is chewing gum. She doesn't look anything like the exquisite brunette on the cover of a glossy magazine that's on the coffee table.
"It isn't me," she said, glancing at the cover and shaking her head. "It's just aesthetics. It's the photographer's perception of what they want, what kind of look they want to get from you, how they want to alter it. You're basically a puppet."
But Bullock is no puppet, either. The star of hits like "Speed," "The Net" and "While You Were Sleeping" has chosen other, less fashionable parts in "Hope Floats," "In Love and War" and "Practical Magic."
And she plays her first addict in her newest film, "28 Days."
Though she doesn't seem to need improvement, Bullock is constantly working on herself and likes to concentrate on two or three projects at once.
"I did lot of traveling, reading and studying. I wanted to be mobile and free and creative in ways that had nothing to do with me being in front of a camera, just open my mind," she says.
Crashing headlong into fame did a number on her for a while.
"All of a sudden I'm getting all these jobs and the crazy money that happened," she noted, rolling her eyes.
"All this stuff. I didn't understand why it was coming to me. I understood the work, understood getting a job, but all of a sudden the excess. I didn't know how to appreciate what was happening in my life."
Every few months she attacks her closet, giving away all her clothes to friends.
"They call it Sandy's Department Store. They fight to see who gets in first. . . . Someone gave me a book on clutter; once they let go of that clutter, other things in life came -- new and were supplemented. I wasn't looking for anything new, but I wanted to get rid of things that I felt were sort of sitting on me. . . . It always seems after a film, I come home and clean," she laughs.
Though she has been linked with actors Tate Donovan and Matthew McConaughey, Bullock is dating a musician now.
"I never would've gone in that direction to save my life but, like I said, what I expected didn't come. . . . My expectations said it was going to be one thing when it turned out to be something completely different."
As sobering counterpoint to film success, however, there's been sadness in her life the past few years. Someone in her family is ill, although she won't say who. (Later press reports say her mother passed away not long after this interview.)
"It's been ongoing. It's what my life has been about for the past four or five years, that's the priority," she says.
"That was the most profound revelation I've had. You can place importance on so many things, and then one day -- within one phone call -- your entire life can just shift. And it'll never go back the other way. . . . "