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Sandra Bullock: 'I Have My Family'

By Alexis Chiu

Thursday March 15, 2007 06:00 AM EDT

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"It's a perfect fit," says Ann Lopez of Bullock and James. Photo by: Mark J. Terrill / AP

The road to happiness has had its share of bumps. The daughter of John, a Pentagon contractor and voice coach, and Helga, a German opera singer, the actress lived in Germany as a child but spent her adolescence in Arlington, Va. "I landed back in the United States hitting puberty, not looking like an American kid," she says. "And everything in junior high's about how you look. It was hell." Years later, Bullock, then 30, found stardom in 1994's Speed. But a high-octane career led to burnout. By 2002, she was so exhausted "my body began shutting down" while filming Two Weeks Notice with Hugh Grant.

Still reeling from her mother's death from cancer in 2000, Bullock decided to take a "detox" break from Hollywood that became a two-year hiatus. She also found herself in a legal battle with a Texas contractor over shoddy work on her Austin home (Bullock won in '04). "It was an exhausting time for her," says George Lopez. But along the way, says Bullock, she rediscovered herself: "I got to know who Sandy was, and she wasn't the same person I had met when I started in the business."

The new Bullock, it turned out, was less interested in making another Speed sequel than in acting challenges, as in 2005's Crash (which won a Best Picture Oscar) and last year's Infamous, in which she played author Harper Lee. Premonition – in which she stars as a wife who foresees her husband's death – is a mainstream thriller. But its theme – "how we take life and the people around us for granted . . . until a tragedy happens," says Bullock, "really hit home for me."