Sandra Bullock hopes her new drama, “The Unforgivable,” will spark more conversations around adoption, foster care and what it means to be a family.
Bullock herself became a parent through adoption. Her son, Louis, 11, was a newborn when she brought him home, while her daughter, Laila, now 8, was three and had been through three foster care systems.
“If it wasn’t for adoption and foster care, I wouldn’t have my family, so this film really struck a chord in that there are millions upon millions of babies and children on this planet that have no one to love— that have no one to let them know they are the most amazing thing when they walk in a room," Bullock explained on Wednesday’s episode of “The Kelly Clarkson” show. “There are millions upon millions of adults that wish they could be a parent.”
During an appearance earlier this month on the Facebook Watch show “Red Table Talk,” the actor opened up about the trauma Laila experienced while in foster care.
“I had my kids in my closet with their little beds because I was afraid to not have them super close to me,” Bullock said. But Laila rarely slept through the night.
“I would walk in and I wouldn’t be able to find her. She’d be in the closet with all her clothes on, she’d be on a book shelf, she’d be hiding and ready to leave. She was always telling me she was leaving,” Bullock recalled.
The little girl also hid food.
Bullock’s partner, Bryan Randall, knew that Laila just needed time.
“My partner said to me, when she’s been with us longer then she hasn’t been, I have a feeling we’re going to see a change,” Bullock shared. “You love by leaning in and hugging and holding and letting them know that you aren to going anywhere.”
The Oscar-winning actor recently told TODAY's Hoda Kotb that Laila “is so friction’ smart and so stealth.”
As for Louis?
“Louie is a 100-year-old man in an 11-year-old body,” she gushed. “And he’s just the philosopher and the laid-back guy.”