Do you remember the moment Sandra Bullock first sped into your life?
While the Virginia native had amassed a collection of credits by the time she hopped on the Speed bus in 1994—including starring opposite then-boyfriend Tate Donovan in 1992’s Love Potion No. 9 and taking on the Melanie Griffith role in a short-lived TV adaptation of Working Girl—it was undoubtedly her turn as bus passenger turned emergency driver Annie that helped her break right through the Hollywood train station and into La La Land.
“It was unexpected,” she later told 50 MPH podcast host Kris Tapley of the blockbuster’s $350 million box office earnings. “And the fact that it continues to, in an unexpected way, still strike up conversation amongst many different generations, makes you feel really good. Nostalgic in a very sort of bittersweet way. Because you don’t—lightning doesn’t strike like that twice, and it struck and no one expected it to strike like that, I don’t think.”
