The 10 best Sandra Bullock movies

She is America’s Sweetheart, and a versatile actress who can carry a movie in any genre, including science fiction, drama, thrillers, and comedies.

She has won multiple awards and also been nominated for many, including a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. 

In 2010 and 2014, Sandra Bullock was also the highest-paid actress in the world. 2010 was a great year for her, as she was named one of Time‘s “100 most influential people in the world.”

Bullock made her acting debut in 1987 with a minor role in the thriller Hangmen, and she got some early recognition for doing a supporting role in the 1993 action movie Demolition Man.

She had a breakthrough role in the action thriller movie Speed in 1994, which gave her enough buzz to land leading roles in the 1995 romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping and the 1996 crime drama A Time to Kill. 

While some of her movies are critical darlings, others are cheesy fan favorites. So, in this article, “10 best Sandra Bullock movies” means films that are most beloved by fans, and not necessarily critics.

10. Premonition

Sandra Bullock stars in this movie with Julian McMahon and Amber Valletta. In Premonition, Bullock plays a loving wife and mother who gets a terrible shock after her husband goes on a business trip and a sherriff shows up at her door to tell her that her husband got into a car accident and died.

That’s not the biggest shock of the film, this is: the next morning, Bullock’s character awakens to find her husband safe and sound in bed next to her. Later, she’s informed he’s dead again.

These mind-boggling events continue for a week, when Bullock’s character figures out that the sequence of her life is strangely out of order.

9. Miss Congeniality

This beloved action-comedy stars Sandra Bullock as a rough around the edges FBI agent. Bullock is joined by a cast of strong actors that includes Michael Caine and Benjamin Bratt, with great comedic performances by William Shatner and Candace Bergen.

Bullock plays Gracie Hart, who goes undercover as a contestant in the Miss United States beauty pageant to stop a mystery murderer from killing the pageant winner.

Comedy ensues as the tough tomboy tries to pass herself off as a vapid beauty queen, all while seeking to catch the criminal before times runs out. When the killer is found, Gracie suspects that a different person is responsible for the crime.

8. The Net

Watch this movie for its unintentional hilarity. Critics panned this action-crime film, but the technology-centric scenes are very funny to see today given that 1995 computer tech doesn’t hold up to what we use now.

Bullock’s character Angela Bennett works as a systems analyst whose co-worker Dale sends her a floppy disk (a floppy disk!) containing a game, then unexpectedly dies in an air crash.

When she takes a break to go on vacation, Angela Bennet meets a man who turns out to be not all that he seems. She then suffers an accident and is knocked out.

The woman wakes up three days later in the hospital, and finds that her life has been turned totally upside-down because her identity has been erased, along with the sensitive information she was privy to. Angela Bennett must uncover the mystery, and survive the grave danger she’s in.

7. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a drama in which Sandra Bullock stars alongside the great actresses Ellen Burstyn and Fionnula Flanagan.

Bullock plays a woman named Siddalee “Sidda” Walker, a successful playwright living in New York City.

In a promotional interview with a Time reporter for the debut of a new play she wrote, Walker speaks about her work was inspired by her very unhappy childhood, most notably due to her mother’s antics.

Her mother Vivi comes across this sensationalized news, and in a fit of rage, cuts off all ties with Sidda. Her mother’s close friends from childhood, who’re part of a secret society called Ya-Ya Sisters, decide to take matters into their own hands, and kidnap Sidda and take her home to Lousiana, hoping to set things right.

6. The Unforgivable

Bullock gives a tour-de-force performance in The Unforgivable, a crime drama with an IMD rating of 7.1.

She plays a woman named Ruth Slater, imprisoned for twenty years for the murder of a sheriff. Life does not get easier upon Slater’s release from prison, and she struggles with starting her life again and trying to find and rebuild a relationship with her estranged sister, Katie.

Adding to her struggle is the son of the sheriff she murdered, who stalks her to get revenge for the death of his father. Her sister Katie, who was raised by an adoptive family, is struggling as well, due to traumatic memories that she doesn’t fully understand, and that have something to do with her childhood home.

5. Bullet Train

This stylish action-comedy features Brad Pitt, Joey King, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in a story about an assassin who is down on his luck.

Ladybug is an unlucky assassin who just needs a win. He wants to get his job right after failing over and over again to complete the heists he was hired for, and Sandra Bullock plays his handler.

His latest assignment is to steal a briefcase that is located onboard a bullet train, but he’s not alone in this mission. The train turns out to be full of other hitmen and assassins with their own missions.

Slowly, it occurs to the original assassin that all of the hitmen might have a common goal while riding the world’s fastest train.

4. Ocean’s Eight

This movie stars not just Sandra Bullock but also Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, Rihanna, and Helena Bonham Carter. What a lineup of excellent actors!

Fans hit the theatres in droves to see this movie, so it grossed a massive $297,795,726 at the box office.

Bullock plays con artist Debbie Ocean, who was just released from jail. She meets her former partner in crime, Lou, to talk about putting together a heist to steal a $150 million Cartier necklace, something she thought about in detail and fully planned while serving her time in prison.

The two crime partners organize an all-female group of specialists to steal the luxurious necklace from the Met Gala.

3. The Blind Side

This hugely popular drama showcased incredible acting by Sandra Bullock, Quinton Aaron, and Tim McGraw, and the film received multiple award nominations and wins, including at the ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

The story follows football fan Michael “Big Mike” Oher, who had a rough childhood in foster care because of his mother’s drug addiction. He craves his mother’s love and returns to see her whenever he can.

Oher starts going to a new school, and makes a new friend. That friend’s mother meets Oher, and ultimately changes his life.

She helps Oher with his education and also his football dreams, aiming to have him qualify for an NCAA Division I athletic scholarship.

2. Minions

Bullock voiced the charming but evil villain Scarlet Overkill in 2015 this blockbuster that made an enormous $1,159,444,662 at the box office. Minions featured a celebrity cast of actors like Jon Hamm and Michael Keaton, so Sandra Bullock was in great company.

In this animated film, Scarlet Overkill attempts to take over the world. Sandra Bullock voices her with nuance and humor, lending the character various shades of personality.

Since the minions have had previous experience with evil masters, they get to work with passion and dedication on Scarlet’s world domination project. But they have another motivation besides liking hard work: if Scarlet doesn’t get to rule the world, she threatens to kill all minions.

1. A Time To Kill

This stellar cast includes Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Donald Sutherland, and Keifer Sutherland in a crime drama that includes brutal riots, Klan violence, activist marches, and a media storm.

This dramatic feature film was a critical success and received many award nominations and award wins, including the Image Awards (NAACP), ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards, and the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.

Sandra Bullock plays a lawyer who joins Matthew McMcConaughey’s legal team to defend a Black man who is convicted of murdering two white men. Samuel L. Jackson gives an incredible performance as a man who killed the men who brutally assaulted his young daughter.