Sandra Bullock Opens Up About Being With Loved Ones in Their Final Moments: ‘I Love How I Am’

Sandra Bullock has learned to love who she becomes during life’s darkest times.

The 62-year-old actress has lost two deeply close loved ones in recent decades – her longtime partner Bryan Randall, who died in 2023 at age 57, and her mother, Helga Meyer, who passed away in 2000 at age 58.

In the second part of an interview with Hoda Kotb for the Today show, Bullock opened up about how she has dealt with being in the room when those closest to her slipped away.

“It’s hard because there isn’t a guidebook. Nothing has served me in a more fulfilling and enlightening way than being with someone in the room when it happens,” Bullock – who was being interviewed alongside her Practical Magic 2 costar Nicole Kidman, 59 – told Kotb. “And I’ve been there and I’ve seen it and it’s been different every time. But I love how I am in that moment. That’s something about myself that I don’t know where it came from, but I love how I am to the person in that moment.”

Kidman pointed out that the cycle of life is a big part of their new movie, which also stars Joey King, 27, and Maisie Williams, 29.

“It’s actually dealt with in the film in the sense of the generations and the passing of, and we have a line in the film where we are the aunts now,” the Babygirl star said. “Which is a metaphor for a stage in life where you become the next generation. People say they cry in this film. Hopefully they laugh too, but they cry because I think there is that sense that the cycle of life goes on.”

Bullock coparented 16-year-old son Louis and 13-year-old daughter Laila with Randall, as well as his daughter Skylar Staten Randall, 32, who is from a previous relationship. As First for Women previously reported, she recently spoke to Kotb on the broadcaster’s Making Space podcast, during which the pair began tearing up when they broached the topic of motherhood.

“Ten years ago, right now, I was 51 or 52, and I realized that I had missed the window to have children, and I felt terrible about it and I was so upset,” Kotb recalled. “I literally Googled, ‘How old is Sandra Bullock?’ I was like, ‘She’s my exact age,’ and I burst into tears,” the TV personality continued. “I reached out, and I called you, and I said, ‘I have to ask you a question.’ ”

Kotb is now a mother to adopted daughters Haley, 9, and Hope, 7.