MoviesOnline sat down with Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, and director John Lee Hancock to talk about their new film, “The Blind Side.”

“The Blind Side” depicts the remarkable true story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. At the same time, Oher’s presence in the Touhys’ lives leads them to some insightful self-discoveries of their own. Living in his new environment, the teen faces a completely different set of challenges to overcome. As a football player and student, Oher works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle.

Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, John Lee Hancock are fabulous people and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us:3

Q: You’re playing people who are real but aren’t famous so the audience wouldn’t know them. When you go about that, what are you looking for and how do you set about trying to capture the spirit of that person?

TIM: I think more of the spirit. I wasn’t really trying to imitate anybody. I wouldn’t want to imitate Sean for anything. I think that I can relate to him in a lot of ways. We both grew up in Louisiana. I was an athlete and he was an athlete, although I wasn’t quite the athlete that he was. And also, as a kid I remember, I’m going to give him a few years and say high school, but I remember watching him play for Ole Miss. As a kid growing up in northern Louisiana, we got to see a lot of Ole Miss games, and I have a wife that runs everything athome , so I think I can relate to Sean in a lot of ways, and the script was so well written that I just wanted to capture the essence of it and not really try to imitate anybody.

QUINTON: With me, me and Michael have a lot of similarities as far as our personalities. We’re both gentle giants, we keep to ourselves, we’re both the biggest kids in our school. I hadn’t met him, so I didn’t want to try to overact or anything or whatever.John Lee , my coach, Coach Lee, he made me feel comfortable with being myself in the role, so I just tried to put myself in the positions that he was in, based off the script, and do the best I could.

SANDRA: That’s a tough one because I do think that I tried to get as close – I mean, you don’t meet an energy like Leigh Anne’s ever. She might not be famous here, but she’s known in other places and I felt a great sense of fear in trying to tackle that person she is, but also a great sense of obligation to be true to this wonderful dynamic. John could not explain Leigh Ann to save his life, and when I met Leigh Anne, I said, “Now I know why you can’t, because she’s original.” But there’s such a dynamic that exists between those people and their children that you wanted to pay homage to them. I wanted to do it as closely as I could, so I did my best.

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