Sandra Bullock has revealed she was repeatedly asked to “drop her pants” during early auditions in New York.
The Oscar winner, 59, made the candid admission during a conversation with Jennifer Aniston, 55, for Interview magazine published August 10. The two actresses, long known to be close friends, discussed Bullock’s return to acting after a four-year break following 2022’s The Lost City with Channing Tatum.
Aniston asked whether Bullock had ever made a deliberate choice about the direction of her career or if it had simply evolved over time. Bullock’s response pulled no punches about her early struggles in the industry.
“You’ll get this,” she told Aniston. “I was in New York, I was a waitress, I was auditioning for every pervert that existed, asking me to drop my pants. I was like, ‘Nope, not the role for me.'”
Bullock explained that she had been “working my way up” during that period, and she identified a common trap that working actors fall into. She noted that performers often operate from a place of fear, believing they will never work again and therefore taking whatever opportunities come their way.
“Every working actor thinks you will never work again so you just take what you can get and make the most of it,” she said. The only time she deliberately steered her career, she added, was when she decided to step away from romantic comedies entirely.
“The only time I was intentional about my career was when I said, ‘I need to stop right now with the rom-coms,’ because I was getting so much s— for them,” Bullock continued. “And I took a role in this film called Crash.”
That 2004 ensemble drama, directed by Paul Haggis and featuring Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Thandiwe Newton and Matt Dillon, marked a dramatic pivot from her established comedic persona. The film examined racial tensions, police brutality and systemic inequality in Los Angeles, a stark departure from her previous hits like Miss Congeniality and While You Were Sleeping.
The interview also covered Bullock’s return to the world of Practical Magic, the 1998 supernatural drama in which she starred opposite Nicole Kidman. The sequel, Practical Magic 2, has now been announced after years of fan demand.
Bullock recalled how poorly the original film was received by critics upon its release. “We were absolutely eviscerated,” she told Aniston. “If you look at the reviews, they were scathing. ‘How many women do you need in a film? How many emotions need to be in a film?'”
The negative reception left her with what she described as “a decent amount of shame” and the feeling that she had “done something wrong.” Her response at the time was simple self-preservation: “Okay, okay, okay. I won’t do that again.”
Yet the film gradually built a devoted following through word of mouth and generational viewing habits. Bullock credited “social media” and mothers sharing the movie with their daughters, who later passed it on to their own children, for transforming it into the cult classic it is today. That enduring fan passion ultimately convinced her to return for a second installment.
The emotional weight of reuniting with her former castmates became clear during a recent video call. “Coming back, not just with Nicole, but with Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing—we did a Zoom to see everyone, and then we heard that Dianne Wiest voice,” Bullock shared. “We all just combusted with tears. It felt like, how often do you get to—”
Bullock’s four-year hiatus from screen acting represented her longest break since establishing herself as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. The Lost City, her last film before stepping back, paired her with Tatum in an adventure comedy that recalled some of her earlier commercial successes.
The Interview conversation with Aniston represented a rare promotional appearance as Bullock eases back into public life. The magazine’s format of pairing celebrities for unscripted conversations allowed for the unusually personal revelations about both industry exploitation and career decision-making.
Practical Magic 2 will reunite Bullock and Kidman with original cast members including Wiest and Channing, though plot details and a release date remain under wraps.