Sandra Bullock battled fear of flying for Gravity

Sandra Bullock forced herself to confront a crippling fear of flying when she signed up to star in space disaster movie Gravity because she refused to pass up the opportunity to work with director Alfonso Cuaron.

The Oscar winner admits she was instantly attracted to the movie project, about a medical engineer on a space shuttle mission gone wrong, but the idea of being strapped into a special airplane, nicknamed the Vomit Comet, for scenes replicating weightlessness left her feeling sick to her stomach.

She tells Vogue magazine, "I'm petrified of flying. Plummeting out of the sky was not my idea of how I wanted to work with Alfonso Cuaron. But at one point I sat down and said, 'What is it about this movie that is telling me to get off my a** and get over something that has paralyzed me?'"

Cuaron eventually scrapped the use of the Vomit Comet due to logistical issues and instead started production using an elaborate set in London to simulate the space environment.