Sandra Bullock - Early Life

Early Life

Sandra Annette Bullock was born in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Her father, John W. Bullock (born 1925), was a United States Army employee and part-time voice coach from Birmingham, Alabama, and her mother, Helga D. Meyer (1942–2000), was a German opera singer and voice teacher. Bullock's maternal grandfather was a rocket scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. John Bullock, then in charge of the Army's Military Postal Service in Europe, was stationed in Nuremberg when he met his wife. They married in Germany, soon moving to Arlington, where John Bullock worked with the Army Materiel Command, before becoming a contractor for The Pentagon.

Bullock frequently accompanied her mother on her opera tours throughout Europe. She spent time in Salzburg and Nuremberg, where she stayed with her aunt and grandmother and became fluent in German. Bullock studied ballet and vocal arts as a child, taking small parts in her mother's opera productions. She sang in the operas children's choir at the Staatstheater Nürnberg. The scar above her left eye was caused when she fell into a creek as a child.

Bullock attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was a cheerleader and performed in high school theater productions. After she graduated in 1982, she entered East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. However, she dropped out in her fourth year in spring of 1986, just three credits short of graduating, to become an actress. She moved to Manhattan and supported herself as a bartender, cocktail waitress, and coat checker. She later completed her coursework and graduated from East Carolina University.