Sandra Bullock and her sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, no longer work together, but they are still close. It’s not every day that your pastries are served by a film star, but for residents of Montpelier, Vermont, that’s what happened the day a new cake shop opened in town – and Sandra Bullock arrived to work behind the counter.
As she boxed up sticky buns and worked the till, the Oscar-winner joked with the assembled news crews that she wouldn’t be depending on the shop for a full-time job. And, indeed, she wouldn’t: she had shown up to support her sister, for whom the cake shop was a passionate new venture.
For Gesine Bullock-Prado – at 40, six years younger than Sandra – the cake shop was a career change. She had spent nine years working for her sister’s production company, Fortis Films.
To outsiders, she was living the Hollywood dream – there were A-list parties, a couture wardrobe and endless days of working lunches in the sunshine. But, as someone who describes herself as “painfully shy” and “socially retarded”, Gesine says she found the whole Los Angeles lifestyle “relentless, exhausting and disillusioning”. So she resigned.
When she quit to concentrate on baking, Sandra was sad but “terribly supportive”. “We have a healthy relationship,” she says, “and we’re grown women who understand the nature of business. Sometimes a particular profession simply doesn’t suit. A sister can tell when a decision is right and healthy. That certainly was the case with us.”
