Her breakthrough in the action thriller Speed (1994) led to leading roles in the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995), and the dramas A Time to Kill (1996) and Hope Floats (1998).

She achieved further success in the following decades with the comedies Miss Congeniality (2000), Two Weeks Notice (2002), The Proposal (2009), The Heat (2013), Ocean's 8 (2018), and The Lost City (2022); the dramas Crash (2004) and The Unforgivable (2021); and the thrillers Premonition (2007) and Bird Box (2018).

[13][11] As a child, while her mother went on European opera tours, Bullock usually stayed with her aunt Christl and cousin Susanne, the latter of whom later married politician Peter Ramsauer.

[14] Bullock studied ballet and vocal arts as a child and frequently accompanied her mother, taking small parts in her opera productions.

[15][26] In 1994, she played Annie Porter, a passenger eventually driving a bus that was rigged by a terrorist, in the smash-hit blockbuster Speed alongside Keanu Reeves.

Bullock headlined the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping (1995) as a lonely Chicago Transit Authority token collector who saves the life of a man.

The thriller The Net (also 1995), starred Bullock as a computer programmer who stumbles upon a conspiracy that puts her life and the lives of those around her in great danger.

[33] In A Time to Kill (1996), a legal drama based on John Grisham's 1989 novel of the same name, Bullock portrayed a member of the defense team in the trial for the murder of two men who raped a young girl, opposite Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey and Kevin Spacey.

[36] In Hope Floats, she starred as an unassuming housewife whose life is disrupted when her husband (played by Michael Paré) reveals his infidelity to her on a talk show.

[38] Bullock starred in the comedy Practical Magic (1998) alongside Nicole Kidman as two witch sisters who face a curse which threatens to prevent them ever finding lasting love.

[42] Bullock took on the role of an FBI agent who must go undercover as a beauty pageant contestant in the comedy Miss Congeniality (2000), which became another financial success, with a global gross of $212 million.

In 28 Days (also 2000), a dramedy directed by Betty Thomas, Bullock starred as a newspaper columnist obliged to enter a rehabilitation program for alcoholism.

Roger Ebert awarded the film three stars out of a possible four, stating: "Bullock does a good job here of working against her natural likability, creating a character you'd like to like, and could like, if she weren't so sad, strange and turned in upon herself.

Movies, found Bullock and Grant to be "perfectly paired", stating: "The script allows the two actors to be at their comedic best, even though the film as a whole is amateurish in many ways".

[48] That year, she was presented with the Raul Julia Award for Excellence for helping expand career openings for Hispanic talent in the media and entertainment industry as the executive producer of the sitcom George Lopez (2002–2007).

[50] As part of a large ensemble cast, Bullock played the wife of a district attorney in the drama Crash (2004), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

[57] Bullock headlined the supernatural thriller Premonition (2007) as a housewife who experiences the days surrounding her husband's death in non-chronological order.

In 2009, Bullock starred as a pushy editor-in-chief in the romantic comedy The Proposal, opposite Ryan Reynolds, which grossed $317 million at the worldwide box office, making it her fourth-most successful picture to date.

[67] Ben Affleck, her co-star in the romantic comedy Forces of Nature (1999), stated: "Every movie you hear about and every script I see, they say, 'We're going after Sandra Bullock for the woman'.

[69] She would next star alongside Tom Hanks as a widow of the September 11 attacks in the drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), a film adaptation based on the novel of the same name.

[72] In 2013, Bullock starred alongside Melissa McCarthy in the comedy The Heat as an FBI Special Agent who, along with a city detective, must take down a mobster in Boston.

[90] On her performance, Variety wrote: Bullock inhabits the role with grave dignity and hints at Stone's past scars with sensitivity and tact, and she holds the screen effortlessly once Gravity becomes a veritable one-woman show [...] the actress remains fully present emotionally, projecting a very appealing combo of vulnerability, intelligence and determination that not only wins us over immediately, but sustains attention all the way through the cathartic closing reels.

[93] In 2015, she served as an executive producer and starred, as a political consultant hired to help win a Bolivian presidential election, in the drama Our Brand Is Crisis, based on the 2005 documentary film of the same name by Rachel Boynton.

Peter Debruge of Variety found Bullock's portrayal to be "easily one of the best female roles of the last 10 years",[94] but film had the worst wide release opening of her career.

[100] Her next role was that of Malorie, a woman who must find a way to guide herself and her children to safety despite the potential threat from an unseen adversary, in the Netflix post-apocalyptic horror film Bird Box (2018), based on the novel of the same name.

[104][105] In another production for Netflix, Nora Fingscheidt's drama The Unforgivable (2021), Bullock played a woman who is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime.

[167] On April 22, 2007, a woman named Marcia Diana Valentine was found lying outside James and Bullock's home in Orange County, California.

After Corbett missed a court date the previous month, police officers went to his parents' residence on May 2, 2018, where he lived in a guest house, to arrest him.

A SWAT team was called and, after a five-hour standoff, they deployed gas canisters and entered the house where they found Corbett had committed suicide.

[174] Her highest-grossing releases are Speed (1994), A Time to Kill (1996), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Miss Congeniality (2000), The Proposal (2009), The Blind Side (2009), The Heat (2013), Gravity (2013), Minions (2015), and Ocean's 8 (2018).