Featured Image Credit: Karwai Tang/WireImage/Getty Images/Inside Edition/YouTube
Topics: Celebrity, Mental Health, Sandra Bullock, US News, Crime
Emily Brown
Topics: Celebrity, Mental Health, Sandra Bullock, US News, Crime
Sandra Bullock has been praised for her reaction during a 911 call after her home was broken into, with the star later opening up on how the ordeal affected her.
The double-Oscar winning actor locked herself in a closet after spotting a man dressed in black navigating himself through her Hollywood home in 2014, but it was how she handled the 911 phone conversation which won her praise from fans.
The man turned out to be Joshua Corbett, a stalker who had climbed over the 59-year-old's barbed wire fence before ringing her doorbell and later climbing through a window.
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Corbett was transfixed on Bullock and even left a letter at her home declaring his love for her and her son Louis.
It all happened 10 years ago on a night in June when Bullock's four-year-old son was sleeping over at a babysitter's as she was at an awards ceremony.
During a 15-minute conversation, which was released by the cops, Bullock tells the dispatcher how she is locked in her closet after getting back from the ceremony.
In the call she can be heard saying: "I can't hear anything, I'm locked in my closet.
"All I saw is like a dark sweatshirt and dark pants. Are they close?
"I'm in my closet I don't think he can see anything."
Responding to how she handed the call, one person commented: "She's amazingly well composed."
However, the incident also drew controversy online, with some saying the Golden Globe winner should have upped her security.
Hitting back at the critics, one person wrote: "I'm kind of ashamed of the people saying 'she should have had better security' or 'her closet sounds huge' etc. As if that detail matters.
"She probably did have security. How about 'people shouldn't break into other people's homes. Even if they're famous!' - no one is entitled to another person's time!!
"Let's stop victim blaming. And remember that she's a human being. It honestly shouldn't matter if anyone, famous or not has any security whatsoever. We should not need it! People should just respect other people's homes and privacy."
While another added: "Everyone seems to be downplaying the situation because she’s famous.
"Fact is, she is still [a] human being—a small woman who was home alone with a stalker in her house searching for her.
"A stalker so obsessed that he climbed over barbed wire to get to her. Must have been terrifying for her."
Speaking back in 2021 about the ordeal, Bullock admitted it had a massive impact on her mental health. “I would look left out of a car. Not right. I would look left, and I would start sobbing,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
“And I thought to myself, I’m a single parent and this child is going to absorb nothing but fear and trauma and shame from me in the most pivotal times of his life, and I was like, I don’t want to drop that load of baggage onto my beautiful child.”
The 42-year-old convicted stalker, who was sentenced to five years probation and mental health treatment in 2015, has since died.
Following an hours-long stand-off with a SWAT team in 2018, he died by suicide.