Sandra Bullock talks family, career, karma and her new gender-flipped crime caper, Ocean’s 8

SANDRA Bullock was the top of the list for the rebooted, gender-flipped crime caper Ocean’s 8 — but she’s really happy to just be one of the gang.

WHAT has Sandra Bullock got that George Clooney hasn’t?

“Well,” says Bullock, “breasts.”

After Clooney, Pitt, Damon and Co. took the Ocean’s 11 heist flick formula around the block three times, Bullock and a star-studded group of ladies take over in the new Ocean’s 8.

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The link? Bullock plays Debbie Ocean, the sister of Clooney’s Danny. And, fresh out of jail, Debbie is assembling a stylishly rag-tag group of thieves — Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling and Awkwafina — to separate a $150 million from the A-list neck it’s hanging around (that would be Anne Hathaway) at New York’s annual Met Gala.

“They’re a family of thieves always on the take, always thinking about what game they can run,” Bullock says of the Ocean family business. And in order to further the family resemblance, she adds, “I had to learn how to be calmer, cooler, not make so many jokes, shut my mouth when I wanted to open it.”

“Basically, I had to learn to be more cooler than I actually am,” Bullock says.

Shot in New York on a budget about half the value of that necklace, there’s a lot of style about these women of substance, all looking impossibly photogenic as they plot their crime in haute couture.

Bullock was the first person writer-director Gary Ross took the idea to as the gender-flipped Ocean’s came together. And from all reports, she and the seven other distinct and diverse ladies in the crew bonded amid a “vomit fest” of mutual admiration.

Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett in a scene from Ocean’s 8.

“I think I’m a pretty good and fair leader, but I prefer to be part of a group and let others shine,” Bullock insists.

“I don’t feel that I lose anything when someone else is having a moment. As Debbie Ocean, I got to step back a bit. It wasn’t me cracking all the jokes or chewing up the scenery.”

Bullock, 53, first leapt into the international spotlight around 25 years ago with Speed — the thriller with Keanu Reeves turning out to be her big jackpot. She followed that up with While You Were Sleeping — “another milestone” she says.

“My career milestones have been allowed to develop the same way that my personal life has been allowed to develop — thankfully, when there weren’t yet camera phones.”

She’s stepped back somewhat in recent years — her last on-screen appearance in a bona fide hit was 2013’s Gravity — a period coinciding with her adoption of daughter Laila, now 5½, and her entering a steady relationship with photographer Bryan Randall, 52.

Bringing Laila into the fold was apparently the idea of Bullock’s adopted son Louis, aged eight. The actor says her daughter is “powerful”.

“Life changed dramatically again when she came along. The family is now complete,” she says.

How do the siblings get along?

“Oh my God. As much as they want to kill each other, they fiercely love each other. They defend each other, even against me.”

Director Gary Ross with his girl power cast of Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson.

She laughs.

“But that’s what you want. You want them to be independent of you,” she says.

“They are going to be with each other for the rest of their lives, long after I am gone, and there’s so much love between the two of them.

“I get to watch them grow up, and I try to be a good mum, work occasionally but only if it works for them. I am lucky I get to do that. There are a lot of mums that don’t.”

The strength of Bullock’s family unit, with Randall at the core, is pleasing to see after years of her romantic life — which has included relationships with actors Tate Donovan, Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Gosling — being documented by paparazzi.

And her Oscar win in 2010 for The Blind Side was sadly overshadowed by revelations that her then husband, motorcycle builder and TV host Jesse James, had been unfaithful. Bullock very clearly has moved on.

“In the last five years I’ve figured out who I was and who I wasn’t,” she says.

“That has come really late in life and it feels good to me that I’ve realised the baggage I was carrying around wasn’t mine. That mountain I was climbing wasn’t mine.

“I think that comes with age. You let go and you don’t care any more. I think that feels like a personal jackpot, because it’s a relief.”

Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway at the Ocean's 8 photo call at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City last month. Picture: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Part of the story in Ocean’s 8 finds Debbie plotting revenge against a former lover who wronged her, played by The Hobbit’s Richard Armitage. In real life, Bullock is not one for retaliation.

“I’m a true believer in karma,” she says.

“I believe that if you do something wrong it will come back and kick you in the ass much harder than it was given to you. I learned how to forgive and let go and move on, whether someone asks for forgiveness or not. And when you think about it, you have the guilt as well as maybe getting caught, so I don’t want that burden.”

Revenge, she concludes, “sounds sexy but I don’t have that ability.”

There’s another difference between Bullock and Debbie Ocean. Diamonds aren’t this girl’s best friend.

“No. Real estate is a girl’s best friend,” Bullock says, leaning forward.

“Real estate that you own outright.”

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Originally published as Sandra Bullock talks family, career, karma and her new gender-flipped crime caper, Ocean’s 8