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Sandra Bullock opens up about how 2014 home invasion left her with PTSD: ‘I was unravelling’

The ‘Bird Box’ actor says she has ‘surrounded [herself] often with unsafe people and situations’

Peony Hirwani
Thursday 02 December 2021 11:48 GMT
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Sandra Bullock's 911 call

Sandra Bullock has recalled how a home invasion in 2014 changed her.

During an appearance on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk on Wednesday (1 December), the 57-year-old actor revealed that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a home invasion that took place seven years ago.

“I’m in the closet going, ‘This doesn’t end well’,” Bullock said while recalling how an unarmed intruder broke into her Los Angeles home.

The Gravity actor, who was alone at her house at the time, recalled that she had locked herself in the closet inside her bedroom before calling the police.

“It was the one night that Louis wasn’t with me,” the Bird Box actor said, referring to her son who she had adopted in 2010.

“It was the one night that our nanny goes, ‘Let me just take him to my apartment which is up the street because you’re going to be out late’,” she added.

“Had he been home, I would’ve run to the closet, which is now my official closet but that was his bedroom, and it would have changed our destiny forever. The violation of that. I wasn’t the same after that. I was unraveling,” she further said.

At the time, police said they arrested a man named Joshua Corbett at the scene.

LA police spokeswoman Nuria Vanegas had said officers responded to the call of the prowler at about 6.30am and arrested 39-year-old Corbett on suspicion of residential burglary.

Corbett was later charged with 19 felonies, including seven counts of possession of a machine gun.

Approximately four years after being charged, Corbett committed suicide in 2018 after a standoff with police.

“What’s sad is that the system failed him,” Bullock told Smith, referring to the chain of events that led to his death. “There was an altercation with SWAT and he killed himself.”

The Oscar winner said she has sought treatment for her compounded trauma and found that Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EDMR) therapy has been the “most healing” option for her.

Bullock also admitted that she has “surrounded [herself] often with unsafe people and situations”.

“I have no one else to blame but myself because that was the most familiar feeling that I had,” she added.

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