Sandra Bullock is reflecting on the “really dark time” surrounding her ex-husband Jesse James’ 2010 cheating scandal.
The actress told Jennifer Aniston in an Interview magazine chat, published Tuesday, about “trying to grieve” the end of her marriage.
She explained that filming “Gravity” with George Clooney in 2011 was extra “meaningful” because the role as an astronaut stuck in space “was paralleling” Bullock’s place in life.
She felt she was “in a locked box by [her]self with no one to talk to for nine hours a day … do[ing] a lot of thinking.”
At the time of her headline-making breakup, the “Practical Magic 2” star was notably “raising and protecting a little smurf,” her son, Louis, whom she adopted in late 2009.
She went on to describe the way she hid his presence from paparazzi, while joking that she didn’t want “Child Protective Services … [to] come after” her.
“I was just cleaning out the closet, and I found these hockey bags for stuffing clothes in for travel,” Bullock recalled. “When the poop hit the fan for me … we know what that is, I realized I had to get out of the house because the paparazzi were going to descend, and no one knew I had a newborn.
“I put him in his car carrier, put it in the hockey bag and zipped the hockey bag around him,” she continued. “Then I carried the hockey bag to the car, as though I was just carrying any random hockey bag.”
The Oscar winner quipped that raising Louis and daughter Laila in the public eye has required “operat[ing] like the CIA.”
She said, “If you’re surrounded by good people, you’ll be fine. But if people near you mean you harm, no matter how covert you are and how much pre-planning you do, your privacy is information that brings them cash.”
Bullock noted that this happened to her “recently” — and while she did not elaborate, she said, “It broke my heart.”
She and James, 57, got married in July 2005 after one year together, with the “Monster Garage” host going to a treatment facility after their breakup.
He issued an apology at the time, which he referenced while brushing off the scandal to the Daily Mail in 2017.
“Yeah, I did cheat on my wife, yeah, I stood up and took accountability for it and apologized,” he told the outlet at the time. “And that’s end of story. … It’s part of life.”
Bullock, for her part, has kept mum about the scandal over the years.
While James went to marry former adult film star Bonnie Rotten, Bullock moved on with longtime partner Bryan Randall in 2015.
The photographer died in August 2023 at 57 after a secret battle with ALS.
The Golden Globe winner shared her fears Tuesday about her looming empty nest, confessing she is “praying” her children won’t “really leave” the house despite growing older.
“Unless the kids are with me, I’m lost, and I have to figure that out,” she admitted. “I keep saying, ‘We’ll keep this house. I’ll do the laundry. You can stay here.’”
