Sandra Bullock says why more people should consider adoption

While Sandra Bullock usually prefers to keep her private life under wraps, in recent weeks, the "Bird Box" star has been quite open about motherhood and adopting her two children. Discussing her new Netflix film, "The Unforgivable" on Wednesday's episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, Bullock shared that she hopes the drama will spark more conversations around adoption, foster care and what it means to be a family. "Once you're a parent, you can't see through different eyes, other than that of a parent," the 57-year-old said. "The question of, What is a parent? is really important to me."

"If it wasn't for adoption and foster care, I wouldn't have my family, so this film really struck a chord in that there are millions upon millions of babies and children on this planet that have no one to love— that have no one to let them know they are the most amazing thing when they walk in a room," Bullock added. "There are millions upon millions of adults that wish they could be a parent." In her upcoming film, the Oscar winner plays an incarcerated woman trying to reenter society after serving 20 years behind bars on a violent-crime conviction. "The Unforgivable" follows her character's journey as she tries to reconnect with her little sister with the help of her parole officer.

In an interview with Extra last month, Bullock revealed that in researching the new film and speaking to incarcerated women, it became important for her to share "the truth of their journey to how they got there." She said: "One of my tattoos was in honor of one of the women that I got to interview that helped me with insight to my daughter. She, too, went through the foster care system and there was something that was similar and she said... 'Oh, my God, that happened to me. That's who I was.' I went there to get her story and I left there being a better parent because of the gift that she gave me."

Bullock herself became a parent through adoption. She adopted her son, Louis, 11, as a newborn and brought her daughter, Laila, now 8, home when she was three and had been through three separate foster care systems. During an appearance on the Facebook Watch show "Red Table Talk" earlier this month, Bullock opened up to Willow Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, about the trauma Laila experienced while in foster care.

"I had my kids in my [walk-in] closet with their little beds because I was so afraid to not have them super close to me," the star explained. "And I would walk in and I wouldn't be able to find [Laila.] She'd be in the closet, with all her clothes on, she'd be on a book shelf, she'd be hiding and she'd always be ready to leave. She was always telling me she was leaving. She'd say, 'I’m leaving you.' And I'm like, 'OK, I'm going to be right behind you. So just know that you can leave but I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.'"

"Laila would hide food. It's survival. Absolute survival. Her spirit and just who she is has pushed [her] forward beyond the triggers and the fears," Bullock added. "They’ll come up for the rest of her life, there will be fears that she has, but she knows that wherever she chooses to go to school, I'm moving there. That's the joke in the house. You guys need to pick the same college if you go, the same city to live in, because I'm gonna be living there." The star said that although being a parent is no walk in the park, she always knew she'd be a mom and that she wouldn't become a mom at a young age. "I am so glad the universe had me wait," she said.