A Place Fit for a Beauty Queen

Actress Sandra Bullock has purchased a Hollywood Hills home for about $1.5 million.

Bullock, 36, plays an FBI agent who goes undercover at a beauty pageant in the movie "Miss Congeniality," released in December.

She made her debut as a TV series star playing Tess McGill in the short-lived 1990 NBC sitcom version of the movie "Working Girl." Her breakthrough screen role was as Annie, the woman recruited to drive the bus in "Speed" (1994).

Since then, Bullock has starred in such movies as "While You Were Sleeping" (1995), "Hope Floats" (1998) and "Forces of Nature" (1999). Bullock, whose late mother was opera singer Helga Bullock, also was a song performer in "Forces of Nature."

She bought a home with three bedrooms in about 3,000 square feet. Her new home is contemporary in style but uses wood extensively in its interiors. The property also has a pool, spa and city views.

Bullock moved to L.A. from New York City in 1989 but has been living recently in Austin, Texas. She also has a home near Jackson, Wyo., where she was headed in December when she was in a small-plane crash. No one was injured.

Bullock is a native of Arlington, Va., but she also spent much of her childhood in Austria and Germany. Her mother, who died last April, was German. Her father, a voice coach from Alabama, is chief executive of Bullock's production company.

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Actor Ving Rhames has settled into a Brentwood home he bought before the holidays for just under $5 million.

Rhames, who last year reprised his role of Luther in the John Woo-directed sequel to the movie "Mission: Impossible," co-starred in the movies "Bringing Out the Dead" (1999), "Con Air" (1997), "Striptease" (1996) and "Pulp Fiction" (1994).

When he won a Golden Globe for best actor in a miniseries or TV movie for "Don King: Only in America" (1997), he surprised the audience by presenting the award to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon, who had starred in "12 Angry Men."

Rhames, 39, grew up in Harlem but studied at Juilliard before acting on and off Broadway in the '80s.

He bought a Mediterranean-style home on slightly more than an acre behind gates, with five bedrooms in about 10,000 square feet. Built in the '20s, the home also has a pool, cabana, tennis court and park-like grounds.

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Writer-producer-director David Duclon and his wife, Deborah, have listed their Westlake Village estate at $11.5 million.