'Controlling' Sandra Bullock cut off her late partner Bryan from loved ones: That's the bombshell claim by insiders who say actress's demands caused 'chaos'… but she tells a very different story

For an actress who disappeared from sight for years, it's quite a shock to now find Sandra Bullock suddenly everywhere as she and co-star Nicole Kidman promote Practical Magic 2, the long-awaited sequel to their 1998 romantic fantasy movie.

But perhaps that's witches for you. The film – Bullock's first in four years – reunites the two stars as spell-casting sisters Sally and Gilly Owens, 28 years after the original outing, in which Bullock's character, Sally, abandons magic after her family's curse kills her husband.

In this case, real life cruelly caught up with fiction: Bullock's beloved romantic partner, Bryan Randall, died aged 57 in August 2023, of the degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the actress abandoned Hollywood.

'When Bryan got sick, after Lost City [the 2022 adventure comedy], I was like, 'I can't.' I thought I was going to have a little bit of a mental issue,' Bullock, 62, revealed this week to hosts Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes on the SmartLess podcast.

She said she started grieving for Randall, a professional photographer and former model she described as 'the love of my life,' long before he died because he'd been diagnosed with the degenerative disease three years earlier.

However, one detail of Bullock's chat might surprise friends and family of Randall. She insisted she 'wasn't allowed to speak' about his battle against ALS – also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease – because he had specifically asked that she keep it secret.

'That was the request, and I honored it,' she said. 'He asked me not to share... and it isolated me in the process.'

However, according to insiders close to Randall, it was the actress and not her boyfriend who was responsible for the thick curtain that came down over their lives – and especially his – during their eight years together.

Although the established narrative has been that Bullock – once Hollywood's highest-paid actress and Oscar-winning star of The Blind Side – gave up on stardom to concentrate on family and particularly her ailing lover, the Daily Mail has learned that some of that family – together with close friends of Randall – felt frozen out by a 'controlling' star who cut him off from the life he had before they met. And who, it's also claimed, has cut off contact with his family since his death.

An insider said that Bullock hasn't been in touch with Randall's daughter, Skylar, since his death even though they raised her together, along with a younger daughter, Laila, who the actress adopted in 2015.

Of the star's distancing from the Randall family, the source said: 'His mom, Evie, has taken it really hard. She's such a person of faith though that she just leans on her faith for that pain. His daughter, Skylar, she's doing great. She's obviously very sad about her dad, but she is doing really great.'

History suggests that the romantic union of a Hollywood star and a commoner or 'civilian'- particularly someone who doesn't work in the entertainment industry - is rarely easy.

There are inevitably complications that don't crop up in conventional relationships between conventional people. Someone has to give ground, and it isn't difficult to predict who that is expected to be.

From the five-year marriage in the 1990s of Elizabeth Taylor to construction worker Larry Fortensky to Ariana Grande's two-year union with real estate broker Dalton Gomez that lasted from 2021 to 2023, there are plenty of failures. A common complaint from the non-famous partner is the erasure of their identity as they become simply Mr Taylor or Mr Grande, part of the entourage like the personal assistant and bodyguard.

Perhaps in part because he never gave interviews, there's no evidence that Randall resented being Mr Bullock.

However, it's now clear that his old friends and family did.

'Once he started dating her, he had to drop speaking to basically everyone in his life except for his immediate family,' a Randall insider told the Daily Mail. 'It created so much chaos.'

The source said this transformation 'started so subtly, and then all of a sudden, you start to realize that he's never coming back home again, he's never calling again.'

After meeting Bullock, he rarely visited his family and friends back in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, the Daily Mail was told. Friends who texted him rarely received any response.

One exception was the funeral of his father, Gary, who died in December 2016. He was joined by Bullock. 'She was lovely and kind at the funeral,' said an eyewitness. 'Approachable, cordial. Did not make a scene over her being there.'

The circumstances that brought them together were worthy of one of Bullock's romantic comedies. They began dating in 2015 after meeting at the birthday party of her adopted son Louis, which Randall had been hired to photograph.

Bullock and Randall went public about their romance in October 2015 when he was on the actress's arm at the premiere of her movie, Our Brand is Crisis. Insiders said they were inseparable although given Bullock's huge workload, that inevitably meant her lover having to follow in her trail.

Over the eight years they spent together, they repeatedly had to deny rumors they had got engaged or even married.

'I don't need a paper to be a devoted partner and devoted mother,' Bullock, whose former boyfriends included Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Gosling, said in 2021.

Instead, in 2017, they exchanged 'vows' (but not marriage ones) on the beach at a luxury resort – Three Bees – on Harbor Island in the Bahamas that had become a 'magical place' to them.

As sources would later confirm, Bullock's antipathy towards marriage was rooted in the messy failure of her previous trip down the aisle. In 2005, she wed motorbike builder and Monster Garage host Jesse James, and together they fought a custody battle over his daughter with his ex-porn star second wife.

But their union ended acrimoniously after just five years amid allegations from several women that they'd had an affair with James during his marriage to Bullock.

James insisted the 'vast majority' of the allegations were untrue but, admitted that 'there is only one person to blame for this whole situation and that is me.' He asked the star and their children to eventually 'find it in their hearts to forgive me' for their 'pain and embarrassment.'

James probably caused further pain and embarrassment when he subsequently checked into rehab, reportedly to 'deal with personal issues' and save his marriage. A month later, Bullock filed for divorce.

For any female star – especially one that had been dubbed 'America's sweetheart' for her wholesome, down-to-earth image – it must have been not only wounding but mortifyingly embarrassing.

So, if she really did, as now alleged, keep Randall on a short leash, it seems reasonable to assume that her humiliating experience with the wayward James might have been a factor in her cautiousness.

And the Daily Mail has learned that Randall - who never gave interviews - was perhaps someone who might cause problems for an image-conscious star. Friends say the pre-Bullock Randall was a gregarious and charismatic man who loved motorbikes and fishing.

But he was also a 'big partier' who 'struggled a lot with alcohol and drugs.' Randall's troubled past, which emerged soon after his romance with Bullock was revealed, included his being attacked as a useless father and a drug addict.

He was in rehabilitation for drug abuse when his then-fiancée Janine Staten was pregnant with their daughter, Skylar, in the early 1990s. Sources said he was not present during Skylar's early life and had a difficult relationship with her as she got older.

Court documents showed that at one time, he was ordered to pay ten months in backdated child support totaling nearly $2,000.

However, relatives said he subsequently 'manned up to his responsibilities as a father,' after Staten, a heroin addict, died of a drugs overdose, leaving him as the guardian of his daughter, then 14.

After half a dozen stints in rehab, he eventually got sober. Taking up photography, said a source this week, did him enormous good 'because editing takes a lot of time - he needed something that could keep his mind busy so he wouldn't want to drink.'

Wayne Scot Lukas, a celebrity fashion stylist and former host of What Not To Wear who became a friend of Randall when the latter was starting out as a model in New York in the early 1980s, told the Daily Mail: 'I knew Bryan when he was kind of in throes of addiction. I knew him when he was out of addiction. When I booked him the first time, I think he was half in and half out.'

He went on: 'Brian had a heart of gold, so I understand why [Bullock] picked him, and I think he was a huge catch for her. I don't know if he could handle the Hollywood life that she had, and I think that it was good that he was hidden away, but I don't know if that was as good for his psyche because he had so much to offer.'

Lukas said he'd heard that Bullock was 'very particular and semi-controlling when it comes to her image' and protecting her privacy. But he added: 'I don't have anything bad to say about her other than [Randall] was hidden away, locked in at Rapunzel's castle. And if that was his choice, then I respect that. But it probably kept him sober also.'

He added: 'God bless her for taking care of him. I'm sure before he had the ALS, she had a great time with him. As long as he was sober, he was a light.'

A Randall insider believes Bullock was particularly wary of his relationships with other women.

'She didn't want her image tarnished,' the source claimed. 'She didn't want a photo coming out of Bryan with another women, for example - because he had a lot of female friends - and then the media perceive it as he's 'cheating on her'.

'It was like she took measures to avoid any little thing that could happen and become a problem. I'm sure he loved her that much that he was willing to do whatever she wanted. She's someone who's hard not to love.'

Mia St John, ex-professional boxer and founder of the Mia St John Foundation - once a close friend of Randall and mother of one of his ex-girlfriends, Paris - said she stayed in touch with him 'for a little bit' after he met Bullock, but they gradually lost contact 'until finally I didn't hear from him at all.' Asked if she believed that the actress wanted to distance him from other women, she replied: 'Yeah, for sure.'

If the onset of severe illness is often the moment that friends and family come together, that reportedly didn't happen when, in 2020, Randall was diagnosed with the incurable neurodegenerative disorder, ALS.

'Bryan didn't want people to know what he was going through,' said the insider. 'Many of his friends and distant relatives had no idea [that he had the disease] and only found out when it came out in the news.'

The first public indication that all was not well came that year when he didn't travel with Bullock to Vancouver where she was filming The Unforgivable. Until then he had traveled everywhere with her along with her trainer, the nannies, security and the children.

He was once again absent during filming for The Lost City which took place in the Dominican Republic, in the summer of 2021.

At the time, sources said that Bullock had introduced a strict Covid testing protocol at her home in Beverly Hills and it was still in place in Randall's final months. He remained tucked away at the back of the huge mansion and few people were invited round. The only regular visitors were medical staff involved in Randall's treatment and care.

According to friends, Bullock stopped throwing her annual Easter parties at the house, and the same went for her big bashes at Thanksgivings and Christmas in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Her circle of friends shrank and when she did see any of them, she usually went to their homes.

'She wouldn't let anyone come to her place anymore unless it was outside by the pool,' said an insider at the time.

Although sources said Bullock remained devoted to Randall throughout his illness and didn't stint on his medical care, his condition did put a strain on their relationship.

One source told the Daily Mail: 'The relationship was absolutely strained by it, and it was really hard for the children.

'He had been living in one of her Malibu properties for a while just because it was nicer for him to be there, by the ocean, and I think some people assumed they had split because it looked like they were living separately, but they weren't.'

Although his mother and daughter separately visited him in the final months of his life and knew about his declining condition, others in his circle were completely taken by surprise by his death.

'[I had] Zero idea. Zero,' recalled Wayne Scot Lukas. 'That's how private it was. Nobody knew, just so you know… There were no funerals. There were no calls. He was alive and then he was dead... Almost like he disappeared.'

The Daily Mail has reached out to Bullock's representative for comment.

An insider confirmed that 'the situation surrounding his death was very controlled.' Bullock, they said, wanted to 'control the narrative' so close friends and relatives beyond his immediate family were 'kept in the dark.'

There was no public funeral or memorial service.

'He had such a vibrant life before Sandra... to just quietly whisper that he passed and nobody really knew anything. Nobody got to say goodbye. It was all just very controlled and quiet. And it was strange and sad. It was like he got boiled down to just being her boyfriend.'

There was a celebration, however, but inevitably it was a very quiet one. As revealed by her sister, on December 30, 2023, the day that would have been his birthday, Bullock scattered Randall's ashes in the Snake River in Wyoming.

'A quiet gesture, far from everything,' Bullock's sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, wrote of the day. 'Far from flashes, cameras and noise.'

And, sadly, far from the friends and family who would have liked to celebrate his life, too.