Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American comedian and actor. Primarily a comedic leading actor in film and television, his accolades include nominations for three Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2023, Sandler was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Sandler was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1995. He returned to Saturday Night Live as a host in 2019 earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. He has starred in Hollywood comedy films that cumulatively grossed over $2 billion worldwide. Sandler had an estimated net worth of $420 million in 2020, and signed a new four-movie deal with Netflix worth over $250 million.
Sandler's comedic roles include Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Waterboy (1998), The Wedding Singer (1998), Big Daddy (1999), Mr. Deeds (2002), 50 First Dates (2004), The Longest Yard (2005), Click (2006), Grown Ups (2010), Just Go with It (2011), Grown Ups 2 (2013), Blended (2014), Murder Mystery (2019) and Hubie Halloween (2020). He has also taken dramatic roles in Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Reign Over Me (2007), The Meyerowitz Stories (2017), Uncut Gems (2019), and Hustle (2022), with the latter three ranked as major career highlights. He also voiced Davey, Whitey, and Eleanore in Eight Crazy Nights (2002) and Dracula in the first three films of the Hotel Transylvania franchise (2012–2018).
Several Sandler comedies, such as Jack and Jill (2011), have been panned, resulting in nine Golden Raspberry Awards and 37 Raspberry Award nominations, more than any actor except Sylvester Stallone.
Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 9, 1966, to Judith "Judy" (née Levine), a nursery school teacher, and Stanley Sandler, an electrical engineer. His family is Jewish and descends from Jewish Russian immigrants on both sides. Sandler grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, after moving there at the age of six. He attended Manchester Central High School. As a teen, Sandler was in BBYO, a Jewish youth group. He graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1988.
In 1987, Sandler played Theo Huxtable's friend Smitty on The Cosby Show and the Stud Boy or Trivia Delinquent on the MTV game show Remote Control. After his film debut in Going Overboard in 1989, Sandler performed in comedy clubs, having first taken the stage at his brother's urging when he was 17. He was discovered by comedian Dennis Miller, who caught Sandler's act in Los Angeles and recommended him to Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. Sandler was hired as a writer for SNL in 1990, and became a featured player the following year. He made a name for himself by performing amusing original songs on the show, including "The Thanksgiving Song" and "The Chanukah Song". Sandler told Conan O'Brien on The Tonight Show that NBC fired him and Chris Farley from the show in 1995. Sandler used his firing as part of his monologue when he returned in 2019 to host the show.
In 1993, Adam Sandler appeared in the film Coneheads with Farley, David Spade, Dan Aykroyd, Phil Hartman, and Jane Curtin. In 1994, he co-starred in Airheads with Brendan Fraser and Steve Buscemi.
Sandler starred in Billy Madison (1995) playing a grown man repeating grades 1–12 to earn back his father's respect and the right to inherit his father's multimillion-dollar hotel empire. The film was successful at the box office despite negative reviews. He followed this film with Bulletproof (1996), and the financially successful comedies Happy Gilmore (1996) and The Wedding Singer (1998). He was initially cast in the bachelor–party–themed comedy/thriller Very Bad Things (1998) but had to back out due to his involvement in The Waterboy (1998), one of his first hits.
Sandler formed his film production company, Happy Madison Productions, in 1999, first producing fellow SNL alumnus Rob Schneider's film Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. The company has produced most of Sandler's subsequent films to date, and is on the Sony/Columbia Pictures lot in Culver City, California. Most of its films have received negative reviews from critics, with three considered among the worst ever made yet most have performed well at the box office.
Although his earlier commercially successful films did not receive favorable critical attention, Sandler started to receive more positive reviews beginning with Punch-Drunk Love in 2002. Punch-Drunk Love's writer and director, Paul Thomas Anderson, had an "obsession-level" love for Sandler's previous movies and wrote the film with him in mind. Sandler was intimidated to work with Anderson upon viewing his previous film Magnolia (2000), but these fears were alleviated upon receiving the script from Anderson. Roger Ebert's review of Punch-Drunk Love concluded that Sandler had been wasted in earlier films with poorly written scripts and characters with no development. Ebert noted that Sandler's character still maintained the "childlike, love-starved" persona from his previous films, but was shown in a new light as the "key to all Adam Sandler films." Sandler was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance. The film marked the beginning of Sandler moving outside the genre of slapstick comedy to take on more serious roles, such as Mike Binder's Reign Over Me (2007), a drama about a man who loses his entire family in the September 11 attacks and then struggles to rekindle a friendship with his old college roommate (Don Cheadle).
Sandler starred alongside friend Kevin James in the film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), and headlined You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008). The latter was written by Sandler, Judd Apatow, and Robert Smigel, and directed by Dennis Dugan. That same year, Sandler starred along with Keri Russell and English comedian Russell Brand in Adam Shankman's children's fantasy film Bedtime Stories (2008), as a stressed hotel maintenance worker whose bedtime stories he reads to his niece and nephew begin to come true. It marked Sandler's first family film and first film under the Disney banner.
In 2009, Sandler starred in Apatow's third directorial feature, Funny People, a comedy drama about a famous comedian (Sandler) with a terminal illness. The film was released on July 31, 2009. After its release, Funny People and Punch-Drunk Love were cited in the June 2010 announcement that Sandler was one of 135 people (including 20 actors) invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 2010, Sandler appeared in Grown Ups, alongside Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, and Maya Rudolph. Sandler and Dickie Roberts scribe Fred Wolf wrote the script and Dennis Dugan directed. Sandler's later comedy films, including Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2, received largely negative reviews. Reviewing the latter, critic Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times remarked that Sandler had become the antithesis of Judd Apatow; he was instead "the white Tyler Perry: smart enough to know better, savvy enough to do it anyway, lazy enough not to care." The next year, Sandler starred with Jennifer Aniston in the romantic comedy film Just Go with It. He also voiced a capuchin monkey in Kevin James's Zookeeper, released on July 8, 2011. In 2012, he starred in That's My Boy, as a man who fathered a son (Andy Samberg) with his teacher (Eva Amurri) in high school. In 2013, he guest starred in the Disney Channel Original Series Jessie as himself in the episode "Punched Dumped Love". He and Jessie star Cameron Boyce had worked together in Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2; Sandler's 2020 film Hubie Halloween was dedicated to Boyce's memory. Sandler next reunited with Drew Barrymore in the Warner Bros. romantic comedy Blended, which was filmed in South Africa and released on May 23, 2014.
In October 2014, Netflix announced a four-movie deal with Sandler and Happy Madison Productions. Also that year, Sandler co-starred in the drama film Men, Women & Children, directed by Jason Reitman. He was considered for the voice of Rocket Raccoon in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy but Bradley Cooper was cast instead.
In 2015, Sandler released his last theatrical film, Pixels, based on French director Patrick Jean's 2010 short film of the same name, before transitioning into a distribution deal with Netflix.
Sandler's first original film for Netflix was the Western comedy film The Ridiculous 6. Despite being universally panned by critics, on January 6, 2016, it was announced by Netflix that the film had been viewed more times in 30 days than any other movie in Netflix history. Sandler also starred in another Netflix film in 2016, titled The Do-Over.
Sandler starred in the 2017 Netflix film Sandy Wexler, in which he plays a talent m
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