Personal Success Despite Big-Screen Success, Bullock Tries To Stay Centered In Family, Herself

Portraying Ernest Hemingway’s tragic lost love in “In Love and War” may be daunting for perky actress Sandra Bullock. But it’s not nearly as hard as caging her own wild heart.

“I was always so afraid of romance, pretending to be hard edged,” says Bullock, who blasted into stardom aboard a runaway bus in “Speed.”

“I kept having expectations and kept trying to control the situation. And everything I controlled, I didn’t like because I wouldn’t want anyone to control me,” she says, pouncing on the yellow-green couch and waving her hands above her lap.

“Whoever appreciates me understands a free spirit and is not afraid of it, if they understand the true nature. So I let go and started really enjoying my life and not basing it on my control. And suddenly you experience things on a greater level. It’s really amazing!”

A romance with actor Tate Donovan ended a few years ago, leaving Bullock bruised and unsure.

But she has regained her winning vivacity and wholesome charm, which dominates her screen performances, no matter what character she is playing.

“In your mistakes, you learn that by letting go and saying, ‘Whatever it is you want to do in your life - I don’t care if we’re 3,000 miles apart - enjoy what you do and I’ll be a friend and I’ll be here,’ ” she says, nodding.

“Learning that is very difficult. And you only learn that with age.”

The “aging” Bullock is 29, the daughter of an opera singer and a vocal coach, who shuttled between foreign ports most of her life.

She comes from a sturdy family and insists that they share in her successes. Her father handles her finances, and after much coaxing, her sister (an attorney) has agreed to be her legal adviser.

“I couldn’t tell you what’s in my banking account or where my checking account is. I don’t rely on money,” she says.

“But I have my family, which is brilliant about that sort of thing … I don’t want to depend on my cash in order to enjoy myself. If you don’t, you’re far more original in gifts and thoughts and everything. I write poems, make things. I mean, I know some people would rather have a Rollex watch than a poem, but so?”

Though success flowed early for Bullock, she hasn’t surrendered to the intoxication. “It’s a difficult thing when we all validate ourselves by success and work and stuff like that,” she says.

“To validate yourself because of your kindness or love for someone else, nobody does that, but that’s the way it should be done.”

Once Bullock hopped off that cash-coughing bus, she found herself a big star. And she’s pumped out one movie after another: “While You Were Sleeping,” “The Net,” “A Time to Kill,” “Two if by Sea,” “In Love and War.” She says she’s finally figured out what she likes about acting. “It allows me to express what my reflections and my ideas and feelings are and what I’ve gone through in life up to that point,” she says.

“… So many things happen in your life and you’re supposed to pack them away and be affected by them at their will. Every time I do something (in the movies) it reflects whatever I’m feeling at that time, however tiny - or something on a larger scale like this (movie). This is where I am. This is what I’ve experienced in life and these are the situations that I can completely relate to now in my life.”

But Bullock has drained the last drop of her vital fluids, she thinks.

“I feel like I’ve depleted that. There’s nothing now I could pull out of my hat,” she frowns. (On her, even a frown looks good.) “After this, the year’s mine. I need to take time off. … I have no stories to tell. I feel like I’m completely empty and I’ll be faking it. But who knows what will happen in life. It throws you curve balls.”

Though she tends to prod herself, she says, “I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot of what I wanted to do, not all perfectly and not all exactly what I wanted to do. I need to start appreciating certain things and not always kick myself in the rear.”

Every day, she lectures herself. “If I don’t act on an impulse. ‘Did I just let the greatest opportunity slip by?’ ‘Should I have said something in this scene?’ ‘Did I do everything I wanted to do?’

“At the end of every day I have the same saying: ‘Thank you for allowing me to live another happy and healthy day. Did I do everything that I wanted to do? Did I inspire? Did I question? Did I treat somebody with a kindness that was unselfish? Did I push myself?”

She admits that for a few years, she concentrated so intensely on her ambitions that she missed out. “I did, for a long time, go through life sort of deadened because I was on this path to achieve and take care of myself. I can’t remember huge chunks of time because I was so on this path. (I was) focused to the point that it was so not beneficial to living life,” she says.

“I don’t remember how things smelled, or what things tasted like. I barreled through meals like I was on the bullet train. I didn’t stop. As silly as it is - this smell-the-roses thing, I don’t remember what I ate, smelled, touched, felt, saw or heard.”

During her hiatus, Bullock plans to visit other countries, backpack with her friends, and savor time like a subtle perfume.

“Every time I come back from another country I find it’s made me more open-minded, well-rounded,” she says.

“I want to have it all figured out by the time I leave the planet. I want to hear what anyone has to say. I want people to challenge the way I think. I want to be diverted in different directions. And the letting-go is a little hard if you’re a control freak, which I was.”