Gossip Girl alum, Blake Lively, has come far since the show ended in 2012. The decade that followed has brought her numerous great roles and just as many misses. But Sandra Bullock’s Gravity might just be the greatest missed opportunity of all for the actor and business owner. The 2013 film that still leaves goosebumps in its wake celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, but the power and charisma that Bullock and George Clooney brought on to the screen could have been very different today had Lively not been younger than the Bird Box actor.
Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity posits as one of the best representations of sci-fi space adventure drama to be ever produced on the big screen. Not only does the film use advanced equipment to recreate simulated environments that show the wonder and the terror of being cast into the abyss of space but Cuarón also manages to capture the disturbing horror through the eyes of his protagonist of what it means to truly be lost.
Sandra Bullock emotionally wrecks her audience with her performance in this film, earning a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her incredible ferocity, which so well defined the character and arc of Dr. Ryan Stone, was unilaterally acclaimed by critics. However, at the time of casting for the role, Bullock was dealt heavy competition from actors like Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively, and Angelina Jolie.
As it turns out, the director was explicitly searching for someone a bit older who could convincingly present a more wary, veteran look to her character, thus securing Bullock the part in Cuarón’s award-winning drama against her other contenders.
The extraneous circumstances under which Alfonso Cuarón filmed Gravity involved putting Sandra Bullock through months of isolation, stuck inside a 9 ft box to simulate the requisite environment, and obscured from sight or awareness of her surroundings because of the complete darkness in which the set was covered – the filming process brought her close to a psychological breakdown. Bullock recalls that the short three weeks that she filmed with George Clooney were a lifeline: “When he left, I have never been hit with depression like that.”
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