The News Life

Sandra Bullock Remembers ‘Nerve-Wracking’ Audition for Speed with Keanu Reeves and a ‘Paper Plate’ .Linh

by

Sandra Bullock’s Hollywood breakout moment began with pretending to drive a bus using a folding chair and a paper plate, she recalled

Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock Speed - 1994
Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed. Photo: Richard Foreman/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

Sandra Bullock’s Hollywood career began, as she says, with “a folding chair and a paper plate.”

Before she became an Oscar-winning superstar, Bullock, 60, starred with Keanu Reeves in her 1994 breakout Speed. At the action thriller’s 30th anniversary screening, she recalled her audition for the role of bus passenger Annie Porter with perfect clarity.

“I was the new kid on the block and it was nerve-wracking,” Bullock said onstage at Beyond Fest at American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre on Oct. 8. “I remember arriving there, I remember the car I drove, I remember what I was thinking.”

Turning to Reeves, 60, and Speed director Jan de Bont, she added, “I walked in, I remember the room was kind of dark. You guys had it dark!”

Screening of SPEED, Q&A with Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves and Director Jan de

But what made the audition especially memorable was the way de Bont, 80, and Reeves had improvised a makeshift bus. “There was a folding chair, there was a paper plate,” said Bullock with a laugh. The plate, of course, “was the steering wheel I was handed.”

So pretending to drive a bus with only “Keanu, Jan, the carpeted floor, a folding chair and a paper plate,” she added, meant harnessing the power of her actorly imagination. “All my acting classes all came together and went out the window,” quipped Bullock.

“The moment I saw you, I knew that you would be the driver,” de Bont said to Bullock, whose character takes over driving a Los Angeles bus rigged to explode if its speed drops below 50 mph.

Bullock acknowledged that that may have been the Dutch filmmaker’s takeaway from the audition, but added that she’s met actresses who were up for the role before her. “You saw me after one, two and three couldn’t do it,” she teased. “Then you saw me in the dark room.”

Reeves, who in the film plays SWAT team officer Jack Traven, admitted that he remembered Bullock’s audition albeit without much detail. Of his own casting, he said, “I met this mad genius [de Bont] and I was like, Oh, f—, man. This is a director, this is a person with a vision. This is someone who has a passion for the story.”

The Matrix star added with a smile, “Then I got Sandra.”

“No,” Bullock corrected playfully. “There were three others.” When Reeves claimed he didn’t remember other actresses, she said, “That is why I love him.”

'SPEED' Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves - 1994

“I have never been so proud of those two actors, what they did for me,” reflected de Bont. “What they had to do is just unbelievable. But the relationship that those two created together is absolutely amazing.”

The Oscar-winning Speed, written by Graham Yost and costarring Dennis Hopper, Joe Morton and Jeff Daniels, became a massive box office success. It spawned a less-well-received sequel in 1997: Speed 2: Cruise Control, starring a returning Bullock, Jason Patric and Willem Dafoe.

Of the possibility of a third film — which the Beyond Fest audience greeted with an enthusiastic round of applause — de Bont said, “I think it would be a different movie.” Nodding to Bullock and Reeves, he continued, “It would be great to work with them [again].”

Bullock quipped that a Speed 3 would be “the geriatric version. It won’t be fast.”