If you think you’re surprised about Sandra Bullock’s career choices and how they add up to the recent accolades of this award season, you’re not alone. No one is seemingly more surprised at this unexpected whirlwind than she.

One by one Bullock fielded red carpet questions about her career in the self deprecating spirit of “who’da thought?” As she struggles to digest the notoriety, perhaps in the vein of the “Little Engine That Could,” Bullock says she’s not one who takes on projects with hopes of an Oscar outcome. In fact, it never occurs to her. “I plan everything in my life and this was not on the calendar for 2010.” That said, after hearing veteran critic Pete Hammond interview her, success in the arts is something she was destined to achieve.

The daughter of not one, but two opera singers, Bullock was on stage from an early age, splitting her time between Germany and the US. “Every opera has a poor, dirty gypsy girl and it was a great experience for me and great babysitting opportunity for my mother.” Despite ‘Sandy’s’ congenial personality, she was a bit of a rebel … she went out for cheerleading just to have better access to a boy she liked on the football team, even though she knew nothing about football and wasn’t allowed to date. Expected to follow in her father’s footsteps, Bullock says she wasn’t mature enough for the likes of Julliard and opted to fill out a college application given to her by a friend for a what she calls the “default” school. E. Carolina University in North Carolina is now lucky to claim Sandra Bullock as theirs. Ironically, her professor was in the beginning stages of bringing the Meisner Technique to the curriculum offering a focus on the spontaneity of behavior between actors developed by Sanford Meisner. This technique is the foundation of her acting talent, even though one might think her movies don’t reflect such depth.

To sum it up, Sandra Bullock is everything you think she is and more. She’s classy, hilarious and so incredibly open to experience that last night felt more to me like us two girls were just cawfie tawkin’ and not sitting in a packed theater of over two-thousand, just sayin’.

Kim Deisler