Sandra Bullock Was Once Accused of Stealing This Movie From George Clooney
Sandra Bullock’s friendship with George Clooney goes back a long way. Ever since they met, they’ve been very supportive of each other’s careers. But fans wondered if Bullock might’ve backstabbed Clooney by taking this film away from him.
How Sandra Bullock reacted when she was told she stole this George Clooney movie
Bullock starred in the 2015 political drama Our Brand Is Crisis, where she played a political strategist. The role initially wasn’t Bullock’s to take, and was a film that Clooney was tied to for a number of years. But The Blind Side star came across the project when she was looking for meaningful work. She was too impressed by the movie’s script to let it go.
“About two-and-a-half years ago, I just put out the feelers saying, ‘I’m not reading anything I’m excited about. Are there any male roles out there that they don’t mind switching to a female role…?’ You don’t get to read roles like this [in Our Brand is Crisis] a lot,” Bullock once told Today (via Contact Music). “There’s a lot of unforgivable things that she does, yet somehow you have to cheer for her.”
When some fans learned about Bullock’s involvement, they were convinced she stole the film from Clooney. Ironically, Bullock had a similar situation happen between herself and Jennifer Lopez. But Bullock was quick to set the record straight.
“He, at the time, was not attached to this film to play the role,” she said. “I’ll steal something from George, it just wasn’t this role.”
“I’ll steal other things from George, like maybe a house in Italy… in a heartbeat,” Bullock added.
In another interview with Glamour, she confided that Clooney’s involvement was why she was initially hesitant to do the film.
“With this I got very nervous,” Bullock said. “I didn’t know if George had made this for himself. But the response was ‘We’re cool with it.’ And then the role—I mean, it was so beautifully written for a man. 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. 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.”
How Sandra Bullock met George Clooney
Bullock and Clooney knew each other way before they even became actors. According to the Oscar-winner, they met at a party, and Clooney immediately affected Bullock’s life not too long afterward. Because of The Descendants star, Bullock found herself in a relationship with someone else.
“I met George at a party where he was doing Buddy Hackett imitations! George was the reason the guy that I ended up dating dated me. He was like, ‘If you don’t get with her, I’m gonna get with her.’ He was kidding, but sort of pushing. So we’ve all known each other for umpteen-chillion years and have supported each other from afar,” Bullock remembered.
Although Bullock’s relationship with this suitor didn’t last long, her friendship with Clooney continued on to this day. Still, they haven’t starred in too many projects together. The first and last movie they did was the 2013 sci-fi feature Gravity. They’re also leads in the popular Ocean’s franchise, but their characters didn’t cross paths in Ocean’s 8.
Is George Clooney’s net worth higher than Sandra Bullock’s?
They’ve both enjoyed tremendous monetary success thanks to their movie careers. But according to Celebrity Net Worth, Clooney has accumulated a larger sum than his longtime friend. The Michael Clayton actor has generated $500 million over the course of his career. Meanwhile, Bullock’s current 2024 net worth sits at $250 million.
