Clint Brewer/TC/Splash NewsYou've heard about nice guys finishing last. That obviously doesn't hold true for everybody all the time, but has anyone stopped to take the lay of the niceness land where women are concerned? That adage can run both ways, friends.
So we can't help but be over the moon for Sandra Bullock now that she's found happiness with photographer Bryan Randall.
Because really, who has deserved a nice slice of happiness lately more than Bullock? And not just because she's "nice." We actually have a laundry list of reasons as to why seeing her with her now live-in boyfriend is always a delight (aside from the fact that they're an eye candy sandwich)—though we may as well start with...
Fine, because she's nice: Nothing wrong with rooting for someone who seems like a genuinely lovely person. And that's not just coming from co-stars, directors and folks who've interviewed her on the red carpet, where it's certainly more pleasant if a celebrity is nice to you. The Oscar winner has actually popped up on Data Lounge as the answer to the question "Who is the nicest star you've ever met in person?" In what turned into a rather hilarious essay for xoJane, a reporter set off in 2013 to find the skeletons in Bullock's closet in Austin, Texas (where she used to have a home), only to come up with zilch. Instead, people told her things like, "She's very nice" (multiple times) and "super nice." Some, like at Bullock's restaurant, may have been under the influence of NDA (non-disclosure agreements), but still, you'd think others would've been happy to dish dirt... had there been any.
Not to mention, she's racked up 10 People's Choice Awards over the past 10 years, including this year for Favorite Movie Actress, so...the People have spoken.
That crappy marriage she had to go through: Well, specifically the crappy end of the marriage. Perhaps the five years she spent with Monster Garage host Jesse James were a blur of motorcycle rides and romance, but that would have made the revelation that James was a chronic cheater with a penchant for neo-Nazi decor all the more painful. The irony that she had just won a Best Actress Oscar for The Blind Side before being...well...anyway, it was just too much! It would also later come out that they were in the middle of adopting son Louis when she found out her seemingly devoted (never trust a guy who so benignly holds a teeny-tiny bag for you on the red carpet) husband was no good. She obviously bounced back and then some, but we can only imagine what a nightmare it was at the time.
She's a normal person: Or as close as it gets in H-Wood. "Be a good person, be a good mom, do a good job with the lunch, let someone cut in front of you who looks like they're in a bigger hurry,'' Bullock described her ideal personal approach to life to People last year. "The people I find most beautiful are the ones who aren't trying." She couldn't help that she was describing herself.
She just seems fun: "Sandra, your heart, your soul, your light, your talent that you share with all of us is amazing and wonderful and extraordinary," Matthew McConaughey gushed when presenting her with the Decade of Hotness honor at the 2014 Guys Choice Awards. "You are one of a kind and you are definitely, definitely hot!"
"She's somebody I adore, really, she's just fun to be in a room with," longtime pal George Clooney said of her in a Reddit AMA in 2014. "I'm sure people will assume people aren't quite who they appear to be onscreen—they're shorter or taller or meaner or dumber—but Sandy is exactly what she appears onscreen, an incredibly charming woman who's really just fun to hang out with. Very smart and centered, even though she does drink a lot."
She also obviously has a sense of humor to be able to put up with Clooney-caliber ribbing. But while it's no small thing to be a favorite of all of her male co-stars, she's got a close batch of girlfriends off-camera.
It's been all about her kids: "Sandra's favorite thing is to be a mom and take care of Louis and Laila," a source told us recently of the actress' relationship with her two children. "It's her biggest joy in life." And Randall seems to be the guy who gets that—obviously a prerequisite for dating a devoted single mom. "Bryan treats Sandra's children like his own," our insider also said. "He really is a great father figure. Sandra is the happiest she has ever been."
She's not afraid to get silly: Or dirty, or sloppy, or serious or behind the wheel of a bus. While it's still only due to rom-com tropes that anyone could believe for a second that she's not instantly the most fetching woman in the room the moment she walks in, Bullock friggin' commits. "Before I knew you—don't listen, I don't want you to get cocky—I was asked in an interview who I thought was funny," Melissa McCarthy, Bullock's co-star in The Heat, told her (as quoted in Parade in 2013), "and I said you…I love to watch someone who just goes for it and isn't worried about whether it's silly or awkward or unflattering." Sandra Bullock—who famously won a Razzie, and picked it up in person, the same year she won the Oscar—in a nutshell.
Because George Clooney's taken: Not to imply that Bullock wanted anything to do, romantically, with her Gravity co-star. It's just that it was so easy to ship those two from a distance, anywhere between 2 feet and 220 miles above Earth. But if they can't be together in our dreams, since that's not fair to Amal, then it's best for the world that Sandy find a dashing fellow of her own.
She has Betty White's seal of approval: White mini-roasted her co-star in The Proposal to ultimate effect when Bullock presented her with the Life Achievement Award at the 2009 SAG Awards: "She is such a wonderful one. With all of the wonderful things that have happened to her, isn't it heartening to see how far a girl as plain as she is can go?"
Heartening, indeed.