Sandra Bullock Wins Both Best and Worst Actress

March 8, 2010 — -- How many actresses can win awards for best and worst actress in the same weekend?

Sandra Bullock pulled off that feat Sunday, when she was awarded the Oscar for best actress for Oscar "The Blind Side" a day after receiving the Golden Raspberry for worst actress in "All About Steve."

Bullock's road to the Oscars has been paved with hits and misses. But "Blind Side" seemed to offer the Academy an opportunity to at last honor the 45-year-old actress.

Earlier this year, she scored a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild award for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy.

Critics agree that because of those wins, Bullock's body of work and the Academy's desire to recognize recognizable stars, the actress was favored over perenial nominee Meryl Streep to win.

"She's a very serious actress," said film critic David Thomson, author of the 2008 book "Have You Seen ... ? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films."

"I think she's just lovely," said Thomson, "but I think she got nominated because the Academy is in a desperate state and has hardly any mainstream candidates around anymore."

"So the Academy searches around and it sees that Sandra had a good year and it reckons to award her for that, for being a good trooper," Thomson said. "She's done good work. She's got a lot of friends in the industry."

Bullock may have won because, according to Thomson's theory, she's "popular, and this might be a year in which popularity wins through."

Bullock kept up her pseudo-feud with Streep, which began at the start of the awards season. When Streep went to hug Bullock on her way up to accept the Oscar, Bullock jokingly rebuffed her.

Earlier she told The Associated Press how the whole thing got started.

"I left her a voice mail going, 'You've got to watch your back. I'm going to cut you. I'm going to take you down,'" Bullock said. "And then she sent me dead orchids and told me to die, so I sent her a case of liquor and told her to toast to white trash."

On stage at the Academy Awards, she gave kudos to Streep and her fellow nominees.

The night before was a very different story for Bullock who made good on her public promise to accept the worst-in-cinema trophy should she win her category. In the more-freaky-than-funny romantic comedy, Bullock plays a psychotic crossword puzzle writer who decides to stalk Bradley Cooper's character come hell or low water -- and at one point, she falls into a well.

"I didn't realize that all I had to do was show up and then I'd win," Bullock said to the cheering crowd of movie critics and cynics.

She then announced that everyone in the audience would get a copy of the movie that scored her Hollywood's most shameful trophy because she didn't believe that all 700 of the Golden Raspberry Committee's voting members watched it.

"This is the deal I'm going to make," she said. "I will show up next year if you promise to watch the movie, really watch it, and really consider if it really and truly was the worst performance. If you're willing to watch it, I will come back next year and I will give back the Razzie."

Bullock offered another option:

"I brought the shooting script, the final shooting draft," she said. "And I will go page by page by page of my dialogue. I'm going to read the line the way that I read it in the film and then I want anyone who wants to come give me a line reading back to come up. So we can do this 'til about four o'clock, or you guys can rethink your decision and have me back next year."

One challenge wasn't enough. Bullock then questioned the other award she "won" earlier Saturday evening -- for "worst couple."

"If you had seen the film, seen it, with your eyes, it's pretty much a film about a woman stalking a man," she said. "That doesn't really set up the premise for a loving couple. So to give us the worst couple award is kind of a 'duh.'"

Bullock's appearance at the Razzies was anything but a given. She's only the second actress in the 30-year-long history of the ceremony to accept a Golden Raspberry. In 2005, Halle Berry showed up to take home the worst actress Razzie for "Catwoman."