Son of Sandra Bullock
Advertisements:
Unknown
‘We don’t have any boys in our family. Boy, is everyone really happy about that. So, he’s like the crown prince.” Louis Bardo Bullock may not be actual royalty, but as the son of one of the industry’s highest-paid actresses with a net worth of $200 million, he qualifies as Hollywood royalty. Adopted by Sandra Bullock when he was three months old in 2010, Louis was born in New Orleans. So where does he currently call home? The depends on the day: his mom owns multiple homes in New Orleans, Georgia, Los Angeles, New York and Austin, Texas.
While it would be easy to say that Louis Bardo Bullock leads a charmed life as the son of famous actress Sandra Bullock, she'd say she's the one who hit the jackpot in becoming Louis’s mom. “The beautiful thing that I was constantly told was, ‘The perfect child will find you. You will find your child.’” Here’s a closer look at Louis and Sandra’s journey to becoming a family, along with a closer look at what we know about Louis.
“Destined” to Be Together
Sandra Bullock says she first realized that she was destined for motherhood in the devastating wake of Hurricane Karina in 2005. “I did think, ‘Maybe not.’ Then [Hurricane] Katrina happened. I’m going to cry….Katrina happened in New Orleans and something told me, ‘My child is there.’ It was weird.”
This isn’t to say there weren’t doubts and setbacks along the way. In fact, it would be four more years before Louis entered Sandra’s life. She also didn’t go into the adoption process alone. When Bullock first considered expanding her family through adoption, she was married to West Coast Choppers CEO and reality television star Jesse James. After contemplating the devastation of the Gulf Coast, the two realized they could make a difference through adoption. “One day it was just a feeling that came that instead of bringing another life into this world, that we wanted to reach out and find our child in New Orleans. There were so many children alone in New Orleans and it was important to adopt from the US.”
Bullock and James spent much of the next half-decade waiting. “We began the conversation and then all the paperwork, the background checks, the home visitations about four years ago,” Bullock said in 2010. “We didn’t want to go at it any other way than the way everyone else would have to do it. There were hoops, but the hoops are there to protect the child. And worth every jump….I did not circumvent. I wanted to do everything the same way everyone else did….it was nice to have someone say, ‘I think you’re a fit parent.”
Unfortunately, news broke in March of 2010 that would change Bullock’s life forever: The tabloids reported that James had engaged in several affairs while still married to the actress. While James refuted the majority of the allegations, Bullock filed for divorce in April 2010.
This also led to the breaking of another big story: Louis had already joined their family earlier that year, but they’d been hoping to keep the news quiet until the Oscar hub-bub surrounding Bullock’s Best Actress Oscar nomination -- and eventual win -- for her work in The Blind Side died down. They succeeded with this goal, and announced shortly after that not only was Louis in the picture, but that Sandra would continue alone with the adoption proceedings. Of keeping Louis's presence a secret she said, “I selfishly wanted to be with him alone for as long as I could and, when we had to, tell his story.”
A Happy, Growing Family
While the path Louis and Sandra took to each other might have been a circuitous one, it was a match that was meant to be, according to the Speed star. And it was worth the wait. “My life went the way it went because it was supposed to be that way,” she says. “Sometimes you have to open up your mind and wait.” Her reward, in the case of Louis? Realizing that being his mom was “more beautiful than anything [she] ever imagined.” Given her powerful feelings about motherhood, it makes perfect sense that Louis was named for the classic Louis Armstrong song, “What a Wonderful World.”
Bullock also credits Louis with inspiring her to add another child to the family. As she and a group of friends discussed life with daughters one day, three-year-old Louis cut in to say, “Yeah, I don’t have daughters. But I’m going to have a baby soon.” Reflects Sandra on this moment, “I realized at the time, maybe he knew something. And when I think about it, it would have been around the time that Laila was born.”
In addition to Louis and Laila, Sandra Bullock’s family is rounded out by her boyfriend Bryan Randall, who insiders say has stepped into the role of father for Louis and Laila. “He is very supportive of the kids, but also of everything Sandy does,” says one source. “He’s involved with their school work, he goes to all of the kids birthday parties and he is always by Sandy's side with whatever she needs. They have built a great life together and the kids are the centerpiece.”
While Sandra took a momentary step back from working to raise her family, the Netflix hit Bird Box thrust her back into the spotlight, albeit with a new perspective that heightened her performance. “What I loved about the story is the river they have to cross is basically the metaphor for being a mom. How frightening it is. How brave we need to be and what we’re capable of doing when our children are put at risk,” she says.
If Louis takes after his mother, he’ll also end up using his fame to give back and make the world a better place. Says one insider of Sandra, who made headlines when she donated $1 million to the American Red Cross’s Hurricane Harvey flood relief efforts, "She has always been very involved in helping the community, especially in NOLA. She lends her hand out whenever she can and when it's the right cause. She is filled with love and is very giving."
But above all professional and philanthropic commitments, Louis and Laila always come first for Bullock. "It's just like being a mom, I finally realize, 'Oh, this is what I was supposed to do when I grew up,'" she says. "Not be an actress; to be a mom....This is my purpose."
->
