The appointment of her father as foreman of her career -- it is soaring and she's now number 69 on the Tinseltown power list -- both amused and bemused the pundits. She laughs at the suggestion that it may result in a Macaulay Culkin style debacle. Her father, she says, has not heard of the child star.And if he starts getting acting aspirations she says she'll shoot him. John Bullock, a construction contractor before he became a fulltime voice teacher, and his opera singer German wife Helga (‘I like funk; I've heard all the opera I want to hear,' says her daughter), have always been sounding boards for her and her 26-year-old law student sister Gesine. It's just that now her father is in the high profile movie front line: ‘My father is brilliant. He gave us his work as a voice coach to come and help me because I needed it and he loves me. I tell you I have never been happier in my entire life. I can look at myself in the mirror and be proud of what I am doing.' Father and daughter oversee the staff of Fortis Films ( she is guilty at least of pretension in that fortis is the Latin for strong)in West Hollywood and a string of films are in development. For her own company she wrote, directed and produced the short film ‘Making Sandwiches' about a couple whose life and love is threatened when a rival sandwich shop opens up across the road from them. She stars along with wonder boy of the moment Matthew McConaughey hailed as everything from the ‘new' Brando to a Montgomery Clift/ Paul Newman/ Gary Cooper of the 1990s. Bullock and tall Texan McConaughey are also the stars of this year's classiest thriller, the adaptation of John Grisham's first book ‘A Time to Kill'. Grisham, a favourite of Hollywood and the world's bestseller lists, had retained the rights to his novel while allowing others including ‘The Firm' and ‘The Client' to be filmed. Finally, he agreed to allow what many regard as his best book to be reworked for the screen. It has a remarkably strong supporting cast including 1996 Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Patrick McGoohan and Brenda Flicker. The result is an exciting and intelligent film and a major awards contender. ‘It's the book that's my favourite,' said Bullock,31, with that big, friendly grin. ‘ The other ones are good reads and they're thrilling and wonderful for the cinema but I think he protected this one because it involved so much that he went through at the beginning of his career as a lawyer. Instead of tackling racism on a grand scale we go back to the core which is the family.' McConaughey,26, won over Brad Pitt, Woody Harrelson and Val Kilmer for the role of lawyer Jake Brigance in the story of the rape of a ten-year-old black girl by two white boys. Brigance must defend the girl's father after he murders the rapists. Director Joel Schumacher had taken the project to Bullock a year before the script was written: ‘ He said it was something he was passionate about. I had done too much of what came easy and I wanted top step back and work with a great group of actors and a strong director. I felt it was something that was very timely and it needed finally to be said.
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