Sandra Bullock adores living out of the limelight – because she can wear what she wants without worrying about the criticism she used to face in Hollywood.

The actress, who married Monster Garage reality TV host Jesse James in 2005, lives in Texas and Wyoming when she’s not filming movies.

The 42-year-old says, “Living out there is so nice. I can wear a thong outside without anyone saying, ‘What a fat butt she’s got. She has cellulite.’ “I do my thing, live a normal life, go down to the grocery store and watch my husband race (motorbikes).”

“How many times do people say, ‘So, when are you going to have kids?’ ” she says in the March issue of InStyle. “Can I slap you now?”

For now, her two rescued dogs are her babies, despite recent reports that she was pregnant. “One hundred percent false,” she says.

That’s not to say that she and James, 37, aren’t deliriously happy – even though the tattooed Monster Garage host might not at first look like her perfect match.

Before she got to know him, “I assumed he was a homophobic chauvinist, a bigot who kills people,” she says. “And later I felt saddened by my assumptions because I wondered how many times I had written off people who truly were real.”

Their relationship works, she says, because of “how the pistons shoot off in our heads. One idea begets 700,000 other ones, all requiring immediate attention. At least my addiction is understood by my partner, and hopefully we can help each other find the normalcy. It’s our normalcy; it’s not anyone else’s. I finally felt I had a net for the real me.”

And the real her is just as comfortable in a “ridiculously expensive dress” and Christian Louboutin heels as she is in jeans and dusty boots. So is there anything she couldn’t wear? “A size 4,” she cracks.

But she’s realistic about her body. “We all have cellulite,” she says. “So do supermodels! I’ve been to the shows, and I go, ‘Stick figure has some cellulite!’ It’s nature. Without it, you’re not human.”

Wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley.