Sandra Annette Bullock (born July 26, 1964) is an American Golden Globe Award-nominated film actress. She came to fame in the 1990s, after roles in successful films like Speed and While You Were Sleeping, and has since established a career as a well-known Hollywood leading actress, with the box office comedy hit Miss Congeniality and one of her most recent film roles, in 2004's Crash, receiving critical acclaim. She was ranked as the 14th richest female celebrity with an estimated fortune of $85 million in early 2007.

Born in a Virginia suburb of Washington, DC, to a German opera singer and a voice teacher, Sandra Bullock grew up on the road with her parents and younger sister. She often performed in the children's chorus of whatever production her mother was in. That singing talent later came in handy for her role as an aspiring country singer in Thing Called Love, The (1993). Her family moved back to the Washington area when she was a teenager. She later enrolled in E. Carolina University in North Carolina, where she studied acting. Shortly afterward she moved to New York to pursue a career on the stage. This led to acting in television programs and then feature films. She gave memorable performances in Demolition Man (1993) and Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993), but did not achieve the stardom that seemed inevitable for her until her work in the smash hit Speed (1994/I). She now ranks as one of the most popular actresses in Hollywood.