Sandra's taking nothing for granted

Sandra Bullock seems as surprised as anyone that she's now back near the top of Hollywood's list of leading ladies.

The 37-year-old German-American - her late mother was a German opera singer - seemed to be in box office decline until the surprising success last year of the lightweight movie Miss Congeniality.

Now Bullock finds herself in demand again - and has also been linked in the gossip columns with film's most eligible bachelor Hugh Grant which hasn't done her profile any harm at all.

But she for one is not taking her new-found popularity seriously. "All it means is I've had a good year and made people some money. It could all change again next year. A lot of things can happen in this business."

Attractive and chatty, the Speed star is currently taking a break after making three new films, the first of which is a dark and disturbing psychological thriller in which Bullock plays a determined woman cop with problems of her own.

Barbet Schroeder's Murder by Numbers is loosely based on the infamous 1924 Loeb-Leopold case, in which two privileged teens murder another just for the thrill. Bullock plays a detective intent on cracking an updating of what's deemed a perfect murder, while struggling with the psychological damage of being a battered woman herself.

It isn't the first time Bullock has played a tough agent and she says she's getting the hang of this world from doing all the research. "I'm now a kind of forensic expert because I've been hanging out with cops for the past couple of years," she smiles. "Give me a blood splatter and I can tell you if it's from a gunshot wound."

Bullock says she was looking for something darker and disturbing after the fluffy Miss Congeniality. She certainly found it in this tense and atmospheric thriller.

"I didn't want to do an action thriller, I was looking for something more psychological to instill fear and tension. Making it was a little creepy but in the end I loved the character."

This isn't a movie about violence against women, even though her character is emotionally troubled by being a battered woman, says Bullock. Ben Chaplin plays a fellow cop who gets into a sexual tussle with Bullock's damaged character.

"We were trying to weave that into the story, this character is really recreating her past all the time without knowing it," says Bullock. "She had all these dark things swirling round in her head and it wasn't until the end of the shoot I felt I understood the character completely."

Her character is not only struggling to solve grisly murders, she's also having to deal with the suppression of her own inner anguish, explains Bullock.

"She putting all these walls around herself and cut herself off from the past but essentially she's recreating it. It's a contradiction that she has to address."

The heart of it is about learning to leave behind the underlying psychological baggage everyone attracts and tries to suppress, she says.

"We all have to find a way of killing off all the accumulated crap that piles up in our heads," she says. "If we can face up to the big issues then we can make life a whole lot simpler."

Her follow up roles to Murder By Numbers take Bullock back to more appealing territory. In the forthcoming screen adaptation of Rebecca Wells' gal-pal best seller Divine Secrets Of The Ya Ya Sisterhood, she joins Ashley Judd and Ellen Burstyn. Earlier this year she finished shooting the romantic comedy Two Weeks Notice with Hugh Grant.

The film deals with the issue of how a man and woman can become lovers once they've become friends first.

"Can you fall in love with someone after you've been friends? It's something a lot of men and women will be able to identify with," says the actress.

The fact that Bullock - who was once engaged to actor Tate Donovan - showed up at the Oscars arm-in-arm with Grant has had the two linked off-screen as well. Bullock laughs at all the media gossip about the two.

"We're just friends, if we were going together we'd want to keep it secret and not attract attention," she says. "The whole media is just so hyped up about inventing relationships. There's so much wild exaggeration floating around."

It was simply good PR for the new film, she says. "We were working on the film together and we just wanted to make an appearance together. I also knew I'd have a great time with him."

Bullock says she found the About A Boy star simply oozed charm. "You can say anything to him you want. Women just die for him and I can understand that."

Co-stars often socialize together and too much shouldn't be read into it, she says. After wrapping Murder By Numbers, Bullock and Chaplin went dancing at Los Angeles' celebrity nightspot Moomba.

They were dancing to a disco beat when another famous Englishman cut in, recalls Chaplin. "We hadn't noticed George Michael in the club, he came dancing up to us and suddenly he and Sandy were boogying like the 1980s revisited. I became a wallflower."

(Murder By Numbers opens at UK cinemas on Friday, June 28).