DATE: Saturday, June 14, 1997               TAG: 9706130060

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  136 lines

``AMERICA'S SWEETHEART'' FINDS PEACE DESPITE SUPERSTARDOM

SANDRA BULLOCK no longer travels by bus.

With ``Speed 2: Cruise Control,'' she's taken to the water, and ``although never wetter in my life,'' she claims that ``it's nice to be out of control.''

They call her ``America's sweetheart'' now.

The former East Carolina University co-ed gets more than $10 million a movie, ranking up there with Julia Roberts, Demi Moore, and Sharon Stone. She's unique, though. She's the one who is ``natural.'' She's the one that women like, not envy. She's the one that men might not be afraid to ask out for a date. Heck, they figure that she might even accept.

``The girl next door?'' she pondered the analogy. ``I suppose it depends on where you live, but I'm not Doris Day. Doris Day was the perfect girl next door. I'm more the, well, I guess the imperfect one. But I'll tell you one thing. There are a million other actors who are more talented and should be in the situation I am. I just happened to be at the right place.''

She rode a speeding bus to stardom in 1994's surprise hit ``Speed.'' Now, again directed by Netherlands native Jan De Bont, she's back in ``Speed 2,'' aboard a cruise ship that goes out of control and crashes into a Caribbean island town. ``Maybe I should never go out of the house again,'' she said with a laugh. ``I'm afraid if I get on a bicycle, they'll call it `Speed 3' and crash me into something.''

She is Keanu-less this time around. Keanu Reeves, who also rose to stardom in ``Speed,'' chose not to participate this time around. ``He didn't want to do it because he had just done another big action movie, `Chain Reaction,' '' she said. ``It was right, at this time, not for him to do it. I love Keanu. There is something so dear about him. We went through that incredible experience together.''

Director De Bont, whose follow-up to ``Speed'' was the blockbuster ``Twister,'' put it more succinctly: ``I don't think Keanu wants to be a star. Being a star puts too much pressure on him. He didn't want to carry the movie.''

Both said that it was an exaggeration to say Reeves quit the film just because he wanted to tour with his band Dogstar. ``I just think he didn't want another action film right now,'' De Bont said.

It was Bullock who suggested Reeves' replacement - Jason Patric, an actor who is known more for dark, brooding dramas (``Rush,'' ``After Dark, My Sweet'' and ``Sleepers'') than for action flicks. He's also known for avoiding Hollywood stardom.

``The part required a strong male character,'' Bullock said. ``Jason, I knew, could do the action scenes, and yet, he's a fine actor. I knew he'd lift my performance. I'd like to do every film with him from now on, but I guess that's not possible.''

De Bont says that the studio considered Christian Slater and Matthew McConaughey, but he personally pushed for Patric after he screen-tested the actor with Bullock. ``They had to have a chemistry, and they do,'' he said. ``This movie can change Jason's life instantly, if he wants it to.''

As for Patric, he doesn't admit coveting the part. He's turned down stardom a number of times in favor of small, dramatic films, but, he suggested, ``Sandy is a conniving little vixen. She's very infectious, and I know she had wanted me to work with her before this.''

So how has Sandra Bullock changed since stardom hit in 1994?

``I'm less controlling. That's the main thing,'' she said. ``I used to be a control freak. I tried to plan everything. I'm nice to people who are kind to me, but don't confuse my niceness with weakness. I know that I can run my life six times over. After all, I got myself here. I feel, now, that I can handle it and that I can do everything. I want to be behind the camera, eventually - to produce films.''

``But how am I different?'' she pondered the question again. ``Well, I have the same sense of humanity. I'm less controlling. I'm calmer. I have more patience and, I guess you'd say, more hindsight.'' She giggled mischievously and added, ``That would be safe to say - more hindsight.''

Helga and John Bullock, her parents, still live in Arlington, where Sandra attended Washington and Lee High School (some three decades after Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine went to the same school). The Bullocks, both opera singers and voice coaches, shuttled Sandra and younger sister Gesine between Virginia and Germany during opera season.

``I was in operas when they required a child,'' she remembered. ``That, maybe, instilled in me a desire to be a performer. I grew up around the world. We were sorta like gypsies, and my parents, to my mind, were great successes. They took an art - opera - that is by no means commercially sure and they made that their art, their craft. That takes some courage. I'm very much a family person.''

Today, her father manages her production company and her sister, a lawyer, handles all her legal affairs.

``I have no idea what's in the bank account,'' she said. ``I don't like that to be the driving force. I make little gifts for people and I shop the sales.

``I almost got married when I was 18. My mom talked me out of it. She taught my sister and I to make our own way. I'm not sure that I was raised properly for marriage. I remember my father saying, `Helga, you raised our girls to be too independent.' ''

Her long-time romance with actor Tate Donovan, whom she met when they co-starred in ``Love Potion No. 9,'' came to a painful end just at the time she became a star. ``I wanted someone to share this with me,'' she said. ``That didn't happen.''

This summer, Donovan is the voice of Hercules in the new Disney film, but he is no longer a voice in her life.

She has been dating Don Padilla, a film technician she met when she was filming ``The Net'' and has been linked with co-star Matthew McConaughey from ``A Time to Kill.''

``My private life hasn't been in the newspapers, damn it,'' she said, laughing. ``It's just not very shocking. I abhor the term `movie star.' This job is not going to determine how I live. People don't really recognize me. They keep saying, `You look like Sandra Bullock,' but they seldom think I'm actually her. Sometimes, I think she is some other person.''

After attending East Carolina at Greenville, N.C., where she studied acting, Bullock made the break to New York in 1986. ``Horrible things happened in New York,'' she said. ``I'm lucky to be living.'' When minor film roles came her way, she remembers, ``They kept telling me `You're not this' or `You're not that.' I should have a different nose or different hair. I told them, `I can be anything you want me to be on film, but I'm not going to change who I am as a person.' ''

Her romantic comedy ``While You Were Sleeping'' was a big hit, but her part in ``A Time to Kill'' was surprisingly small, and she got bad reviews when asked to play Ernest Hemingway's lover in ``In Love and War.''

She succumbed to the underwater scenes in ``Speed 2'' even though she's had a fear of water since she almost drowned in a teen surfing accident.

``I was slammed against the side of the ship by the tide,'' she said. ``In the scene in which my hands are tied underwater, I actually think I would have drowned if Jason hadn't stopped the scene. He realized something was wrong with me. We lived on the ship for six weeks at sea. The sea was so rough that I fell out of bed a number of times.''

Next, she wants to stay dry, and calm, with a drama to be called ``Hope Floats,'' directed by Forest Whitaker and co-starring Gena Rowlands and Harry Connick Jr. Bullock will be the producer.

On dry land, Bullock says she has a new philosophy on her life. ``I have hope but not expectations,'' she said. ``That's it. I no longer am the control freak I once was.'' ILLUSTRATION: RON PHILLIPS

A picturesque harbor town receives a unexpected visitor - an

out-of-control cruise ship - in the movie ``Speed 2.''

Sandra Bullock clowns on the set with director Jan De Bont, who

also directed her breakthrough film ``Speed.'' KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW

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