Sandra Bullock gave a funny interview to USA Today to promote her new film, The Proposal. Mostly, the interview is about how much Bullock loves her costar Betty White, and how Betty White is pretty much the most awesome person around. A Golden Girls devotee myself, I’m totally with Sandra on this one. Sandra talks about the funny scene (that’s in the previews) of Betty feeling Sandra up and cracking a joke about how she’s flat-chested. But the best part of the interview was when Sandra talks about how she feels a real kinship with Betty because they both chose to be stepmothers but not biological mothers. As Sandra says it, “I may never hear that word ‘mom’. But being a parent is not about breeding. It’s about caring. And it’s easy to say, but it’s harder to do.” Amen to that. Sandra’s comments sort of remind me of what Cameron Diaz said last week, that “we don’t need any more kids, we have plenty of people on this planet.”

Betty White steals every scene she’s in during The Proposal by doing her never-fail mischievous granny routine. And star Sandra Bullock knows it. “You have to play the straight guy. There’s no way you’re going to match her.”

When the elder actress feels around Bullock’s chest for her breasts while altering a baggy wedding dress and declares, “It’s like an Easter egg hunt,” the line gets them every time. “She was one of the most gentle lovers I’ve ever had,” Bullock jokes. “And I was thankful that she found them.”

White has even gone viral, thanks to a mock on-the-set video that has received almost 300,000 views on the humor website Funny or Die. She harasses male lead Ryan Reynolds, calling him an “ab-crunching jackass,” and sneakily flashes him the finger while being syrupy sweet to Bullock.

What did take Bullock aback was how the life of TV’s onetime Happy Homemaker, Golden Girl and game-show queen paralleled hers, a fact she learned while doing publicity with fellow cast members.

“Someone made a comment about your husband and children and all that stuff,” she says about White, 87, who found lasting love in her early 40s with Password host and widower Allen Ludden after two short-lived marriages. “She said, ‘You know what? I never had children biologically. I married someone who had three children. And how blessed I was to have those three stepchildren.’ That’s exactly what happened to me.”

Given how gossip rags are always speculating on whether Bullock is pregnant with her motorcycle mogul husband Jesse James, White’s inspirational words struck home. “I went, ‘Wow.’ When everyone is going ‘You should have a baby now,’ I’m like, ‘I could. Maybe I should. But do I need to?’”

Bullock continues to adjust to life as a stepmom. She and James work closely with his first wife to raise his two older children. “We all parent together,” she says. “It’s beautiful. It’s like synchronized swimming.” Daughter Sunny, 5, has been living with her dad and Bullock while his second wife, porn star Janine Lindemulder, serves time for failing to pay taxes.

“I may never hear that word ‘mom,’ ” Bullock says. “But being a parent is not about breeding. It’s about caring. And it’s easy to say, but it’s harder to do. When you don’t have that title, you flounder and it hurts. But this is the best test of being a parent. And I just have to keep reminding myself I don’t care what I get. I care what I give.”

[From USA Today]

I didn’t know that about Betty White, so I found her romantic history very interesting. Most people have probably already seen the video that the article referenced from Funny or Die featuring Sandra, Ryan Reynolds and Betty White, but here’s the link to it anyway. Even though I think The Proposal looks horrible, I hope Betty gets a solid career resurgence out of it. Betty needs to be in more movies and television shows. Cast her on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, they always get great old-school stars to play perverts.

Sandra, Sunny and Jesse James are shown at LAX on 7/27/08. Credit: Bauergriffin