Sandra attended yesterday, in Los Angeles, a Q&A for Bird Box during Deadline’s The Contenders panel.

Deadline – While Sandra Bullock would eventually fall in love with Bird Box—a Netflix horror-thriller based on a novel by Josh Malerman and directed by Susanne Bier—the Oscar winner had quite a different reaction to the material in her first interaction with it some years ago.

“I thought it was intriguing, but there was something about it that didn’t click. I don’t relate to someone who doesn’t want to be a mother; I don’t relate to someone who isn’t warm and can’t love freely. Then I read it a few years ago and it hit me in a way that I can’t explain.”

Directed by Bier from Eric Heisserer’s script, Bird Box follows Malorie (Bullock), a woman who joins a pair of children in making her way through a dystopian setting along a river—all while blindfolded. In this post-apocalyptic world, to take the blindfolds off would be to risk insanity and even death.

Interestingly, what was initially so distancing about Malorie for the film’s star—her cold indifference to the children in front of her—became the part of the character that drew her in later on. Reluctant to be a mother, it’s Malorie’s self-centered approach to survival that offers a starting point for the character to transform.

“To have someone who’s that cut off then be forced to be the sole caretaker of human beings that she didn’t want to begin with, what does that bring out of you—and what is family?”

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