“He had to keep my integrity intact,” Bullock said during a 30th-anniversary reunion with her costar and director Jan de Bont.
Keanu Reeves made sure Sandra Bullock didn’t have a Marilyn moment on the set of Speed.
At a special 30th-anniversary screening and Q&A alongside Reeves and director Jan de Bont held in Hollywood earlier this week, Bullock looked back on filming the memorable LAX airport scene in which she and Reeves evacuated the bomb-rigged bus. The action-packed moment saw the two escape under the moving bus by using a floor hatch as a makeshift sled and sliding to safety.
“I had this dress that was very light and I had a bodysuit underneath, and when we started rehearsing I noticed that the velocity of air would shoot the skirt over my head,” Bullock recalled. “So Keanu’s job for me, which was the most important thing, was to [place his] hand in a way where the skirt doesn’t fly over my head.”
Everett
Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in ‘Speed’
She continued, “So not only did he have to do the stunt [and] to keep me safe, he had to keep my integrity intact, keeping things that didn’t need to be seen on a 17-foot screen.”
Bullock also joked about why she was cast in the high-octane thriller at a time when she was still a Hollywood newbie. “Because if you killed me, I wasn’t a big actor at the time,” she quipped. “It would’ve been ‘Actor dies in stunt in a Keanu Reeves movie.'”
Staged as part of this year’s Beyond Fest, the reunion marked the first time de Bont and his two stars shared the stage to discuss the film since its release. The 1994 blockbuster follows Reeves’ Los Angeles police officer Jack Traven as he races against the clock to prevent a city bus full of passengers, including Bullock’s spunky Annie, from blowing up after it’s rigged with a bomb by vengeful extortionist Howard Payne (the late Dennis Hopper).
Photographer Jared Cowan for Beyond Fest at American Cinematheque at Egyptian
Jan de Bont, Keanu Reeves, and Sandra Bullock mark the 30th anniversary of ‘Speed’
