After taking a career-making bus ride in the 1994 hit Speed, Sandra Bullock worked her way steadily into the hearts of film fans with a succession of romantic, girl-next-door types and feisty heroines. Her biggest hits include While You Were Sleeping, A Time To Kill, Two Weeks Notice and, five years ago, Miss Congeniality. Returning to the role of FBI agent Gracie Hart, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed And Fabulous sees her tomboy-turned-beauty queen coping with the consequences of her new found fame.

Was it an easy choice to return to the role of Gracie?

There was never any pressure to make a sequel so we never considered it, even after we'd finished the first film. But about a year later, [writer] Marc Lawrence and I found ourselves joking about what would have happened had an FBI agent really done what Gracie did and thwarted a bomb threat and saved Miss United States in front of the cameras. With the media being what it is, she would've been on every talk show. So it was that premise that we expanded on and it just became something we found ourselves talking about.

Having done Speed 2 was the thought of making a sequel something you resisted?

I learned from that film that, unless it's on the page, there's no point in doing it. So we said if this film could stand on its own, as if the first one hadn't been made, then it was something that would be exciting to do. And I had enough distance, I had done a few other things in between so I wasn't tired of Gracie, I got to rejoin her and appreciate how great a character she was. Regardless of whether she's male or female this was a great comedic character that Marc had written.

Amongst the many memorable stunts you pull off on screen, how was it chasing, then leaping on Dolly Parton in the Venetian Hotel set?

It was extraordinary to straddle Dolly Parton. I was literally lying on top of her, and I didn't feel comfortable with this but she looked at me and said: "We're going to put the Madonna-Britney kiss to shame!" And I thought "Wow, you rock. You just rock!". Really, she was everything you'd want her to be and more.

One of the themes of the film is how celebrity changes Gracie. Can you identify with that?

All that stuff happened for me over the course of a couple of films as I suddenly realised that things were not as they used to be. There's a lot of people around you suggesting things who seem to know better than you. Nine times out of ten those people are making suggestions that benefit them rather than you. I was just excited to have a job. You don't realise halfway in that you've really gone off the track that you were supposed to be on. But I have to say that I would take that same path again because otherwise I would never have figured out what it was that I was supposed to be doing.

How did people around you change after you became famous?

My neighbours sold me out. I had a wedding in my backyard, and my neighbours thought it was mine so they called in every paparazzi from every tabloid and had them sitting in their window waiting for me to walk down the aisle. It turned out to be a wedding between two men! You can see that they were disappointed but at least they had some great wedding pictures for the people who got married. I was just shocked at the level to which people would sell you down the river.

How do you cope in situations like that, when everyone wants something from you?

Becoming illiterate is the key to happiness in this business. You really have to stop reading the newspapers because it's just one person's opinion. Not everyone's going to like your work and not everyone's going to like you.

Miss Congeniality 2 is released in UK cinemas on Friday 25th March 2005.