Sandra Bullock Says She’s ‘So Happy’ After a Difficult Few Years: ‘I Take Care of Myself Now’

Sandra Bullock said on the SmartLess podcast that she is taking “care of myself now,” three years after her partner Bryan Randall died at 57 in August 2023 following a private three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

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Sandra Bullock said on the SmartLess podcast that she is taking “care of myself now,” three years after the death of her partner Bryan Randall

Bullock, who began dating Randall in 2015, cared for her partner for years until he died at 57 in August 2023 following a private three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)

The Academy Award-winning actress returns to the big screen in September with Practical Magic 2

Sandra Bullock is embracing a happy outlook on life as she returns to the spotlight for Practical Magic 2.

Bullock, 62, appeared on SiriusXM’s SmartLess podcast on Monday, Aug. 17, to promote her upcoming sequel co-starring Nicole Kidman. During her conversation with cohosts Sean Hayes, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett, Bullock opened up about her longtime partner Bryan Randall‘s death at age 57 in August 2023 following a private three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and said she emerged on the other side of his death having learned more about herself.

“My sister for my birthday gave me this beautiful pewter box and it said ‘Leonardo da Vinci,’ a quote by him at like 87, he says, ‘I’m still learning,’” she said on the podcast. “I went ‘Oh.’ That’s why, I think, I have such happiness in my chest.”

“Other things can frustrate me, things can upset me, I get pissed off, I get petty, but there’s a — I’m so happy and I feel like I’m a kid for the first time in my life as I’m seeing things that I’ve seen a million times before,” she added. “But now I see them with such a love that I didn’t have before. It’s just — yes, I have a great therapist. Yes, I think I did the right thing with the kids. Yes, I did usher out Brian the way a human being deserves to be ushered out. I didn’t take care of myself then, but I so take care of myself now.”

Bullock is a mom to two teenagers, Louis and Laila, whom she welcomed through adoption in the 2010s. She and Randall, whom she began dating in 2015, acted as co-parents to her kids. She said elsewhere during the conversation that Randall “asked me not to share” information about his diagnosis publicly, though keeping the situation a secret “isolated me in the process.”

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During the podcast, Bullock recounted coming down with COVID-19 some time before Randall’s death and still needing to do tasks around her home like preparing food for nurses who were taking care of her partner. “I just didn’t feel right afterwards,” she said. “As a woman, I’m like, ‘Something is wrong,’ and I said, ‘Oh my God. If all the stress gave me, like, cancer, that’s when I’m going to get mad. Not at anything else, I’m going to be pissed if I made myself sick.’”“I remember being at the doctor and she sees me coming in all amped up and bubble wrapped and I said, ‘If I’m okay, I swear to God,’” Bullock added. “And she goes, ‘You’ll take care of yourself now?’ And I said, ‘I swear to God, I will.’ And she called me up and she goes, ‘You’re fine,’ and I was like, new lease on life. Seeing your own body break down was sort of the messenger.”

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Now three years removed from Randall’s death, Bullock is returning to movies for the first time since her 2022 film The Lost City in Practical Magic 2, a sequel to her 1998 movie of the same name. She and Kidman reprise their roles as sisters Sally and Gillian Owens, witches in Massachusetts who must once more confront a family curse that causes the deaths of men whom women in their family fall in love with. The new movie sees Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest reprise their roles from the original movie, with Joey King, Maisie Williams, Lee Pace, Xolo Maridueña and Solly McLeod joining for the sequel.

Practical Magic 2 is in theaters Sept. 10.

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