Adam Sandler

Adam Sandler
Sandler at Cannes in 2002
Born	Adam Richard Sandler
Occupation(s)	comedian, actor, musician, screenwriter, film producer
Years active	1987—present
Spouse	Jackie Sandler
Awards	Kids' Choice Wannabe Award 2004 Kid's Choice Blimp award 1999 The Waterboy 2000 Big Daddy 2003 Mr. Deeds & Eight Crazy Nights 2005 50 First Dates 2007 ClickGijón International Film Festival best actor 2002 Punch-Drunk LoveBlockbuster Entertainment Awards 1999 The Waterboy 2000 Big DaddyMTV Movie Awards 1996 Happy Gilmore 1998 The Wedding Singer 1999 The Waterboy 2000 Big Daddy 2004 50 First DatesTeen Choice Awards 2001 Choice comedian 2002 Choice comedian 2003 Anger Management 2004 50 First Dates & Choice comedian 2005 Choice comedian 2006 Choice comedianPeople's Choice Awards 2000 Favorite Motion Picture Star in a Comedy 2005 50 First Dates 2006 Favorite Funny Male Star
Website	http://www.adamsandler.com/

Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American comedian, a Golden Globe-nominated actor, musician, screenwriter, and film producer. After becoming a popular Saturday Night Live cast member, he went on to star in several Hollywood feature films that grossed over US$100 Million at the box office. Though he is best known for his comedic roles, such as in the films Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), and Big Daddy (1999), he has also had success in romantic and dramatic roles, such as in the films Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Spanglish (2004), Click (2006), and Reign Over Me (2007).

Biography

Early life

Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York to Judy, a nursery school teacher, and Stanley Sandler, an electrical engineer. He had a Jewish upbringing. His family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire when he was five. There, he attended Manchester Central High School. He found he was a natural comic, and nurtured his talent while at New York University by performing regularly in clubs and on campuses. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991, and was also a member of the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity. Later in his career, he would often draw on his earliest memories in his comedy and movies. The song "Lunchlady Land" is dedicated to Silvia, the lunchlady at Hayden Dining Hall at New York University. In the movie Click, Sandler goes to Lake Winnipesaukee, a lake in New Hampshire where he went to summer camp.

Acting career

In the mid to late 1980s, Sandler played Theo Huxtable's friend, Smitty, on The Cosby Show (1987–1988). He was a performer for the MTV game show Remote Control, on which he made appearances as the characters "Trivia Delinquent" or "Stud Boy". Sandler started performing in clubs early on, taking the stage at his brother's urging when he was only 17. He was then discovered by comedian Dennis Miller, who caught Sandler's act in Los Angeles. Miller immediately 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, quickly making a name for himself by performing amusing original songs on the show, including "The Chanukah Song". He left the show in 1995 to focus on his acting career.

Sandler's first starring role was in 1989 when he starred in the movie Going Overboard. In 1995, he starred in Billy Madison, in which he plays a grown, though uneducated, man repeating grades 1–12 to earn his father's respect back, along with the right to inherit his father's multi-million-dollar hotel empire. He followed this movie up with other financially successful comedies such as Bulletproof (1996), 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.

Although most of his earlier films were almost universally despised by movie critics, many of his recent films, starting with Punch-Drunk Love (2002), have received almost uniformly positive reviews, leading many movie critics to believe that Sandler possesses considerable acting ability that they believed had been previously wasted on poorly written scripts and characters with no development. Audiences have remained faithful to Sandler's slapstick humor to the tune of US$100-million-plus grossing movies. Sandler has moved outside the genre of goofball humor to take on more serious parts such as the aforementioned Punch-Drunk Love (for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe), Spanglish (2004) and Reign Over Me (2007) He also plays a loving father figure in Big Daddy (1999). During filming, he met Jacqueline Samantha Titone -- his future wife and mother of his daughter. Jackie was cast as the charming waitress from The Blarney Stone Bar.

At one point, Sandler was considered for the part that went to Jamie Foxx in Collateral (2004). He also was one of the finalists along with Jim Carrey and Johnny Depp for the role of Willy Wonka in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), but Depp in the end got the role. He returned to more dramatic fare with Mike Binder's Reign Over Me (2007), a drama about a man who lost his entire family in 9/11 and rekindles a friendship with his old college roommate (played by Don Cheadle). Most recently, he starred in the movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), where he stars along side Kevin James as a New York City fireman pretending to be gay keep up an insurance scam, so his best friend's children can have benefits.

He recently finished production on his next comedy You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) a film written by Sandler, The 40-Year-Old Virgin writer-director Judd Apatow (who was an old roommate of Sandler's when both were starting out), and Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog creator Robert Smigel and directed by Happy Gilmore director Dennis Dugan about a Mossad agent who fakes his own death and moves to the United States to become a hair stylist. The film is set for a June 6, 2008 release. He is currently working on Bedtime Stories (2008), a fantasy film being directed by Bringing Down the House director Adam Shankman about a stressed real estate developer whose bedtime stories he reads to his niece and nephew begin to come true, which will mark Sandler's first family film and first film under the Walt Disney banner. English comedian Russell Brand will co-star. He is also set to star in Judd Apatow's third directorial feature, which is yet untitled. The film will costar Seth Rogen and Leslie Mann and filming is set to begin in the late summer or early fall of 2008, depending on the expected Screen Actors Strike of 2008. Sandler has also been long-rumored to costar with Michael Madsen in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming World War II saga Inglorious Bastards.

In June 2007, it was announced that his production company, Happy Madison, had made a preemptive acquisition for Mitch Albom's screenwriting debut.

Cameos and other work

File:Sandler reads ode to bob.png

Sandler reads 'An Ode to Bob' during his Price is Right appearance

Sandler made a cameo appearance on an episode of The Price Is Right during the "Happy Gilmore Showcase". Host Bob Barker appeared in the movie Happy Gilmore which featured a famous fight scene with Sandler's character (where Barker wins). He also appeared on Bob Barker's tribute show on May 17, 2007, in which he read a poem to Bob and congratulated him on his retirement from TPIR. The clip is available on YouTube.

Sandler cameoed as a special audience member in an episode of The Showbiz Show with David Spade and as the feature guest on the final episode of John McEnroe's eponymous CNBC talk show, airing in late 2004. McEnroe had appeared in two of Sandler's movies, both times as himself (Mr. Deeds and Anger Management). In The Animal, starring Rob Schneider, Sandler appears briefly as Schneider's "'You can do it' Guy" from The Waterboy.

On March 20, 2007, Sandler was scheduled to be a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman. However, due to a minor illness, Letterman could not host the show and Sandler filled in as host.

On June 13, 2007, Sandler appeared and won the "Man's Man Award" on the Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards.

He appeared on Australian TV show Rove Live when it toured America in July 2007. He was on the July 22 show in New York.

Sandler and Rob Schneider make frequent cameos in each other's movies:

• The Hot Chick, where Schneider stars, Sandler plays the spacey drummer
• The Animal, where Schneider stars, Sandler played the townie
• Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, where Schneider stars, Sandler plays one of the deceased gigolos.
• The Longest Yard, where Sandler stars, Schneider suggests to the prisoners around him that they hug in the showers. Even though he says similar lines as the Townie, he is credited as 'Punky' in this movie.
• Little Nicky, where Sandler stars, Schneider is an angry man (Townie) in riot based on the same character from The Waterboy.
• Big Daddy, where Sandler stars, Schneider plays a delivery guy.
• Mr. Deeds, where Sandler stars, Schneider plays the delivery man from Big Daddy; he catches a cat that Sandler shoots from a burning building trying to save it.
• 50 First Dates, where Sandler stars, Schneider plays a Hawaiian friend of Adam's character with one eye and is the presiding minister at his wedding.
• The Waterboy, where Sandler stars, Schneider plays an angry Townie.
• Eight Crazy Nights, where Sandler stars, Schneider voices an Asian waiter who doesn't like Sandler's character, and also provides the narration.
• Click, where Sandler stars, Schneider plays Prince Habeeboo, a potential foreign customer for Sandler's architect firm.
• I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, where Sandler stars, Schneider plays the rabbi who marries Sandler and James' characters.

Personal life

On June 22, 2003, Sandler married actress Jacqueline Samantha Titone, and they are the parents of Sadie Madison Sandler, born May 6, 2006, at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. Sandler lives with his family in Los Angeles, though he also has a home in New York.

Actor Thomas Wilson of Back to the Future fame has stated that Sandler is the "nicest famous guy he knows".

Sandler has contributed money to Rudy Giuliani's 2008 Presidential campaign,, and in October 2007, made a million-dollar donation to the Boys and Girls Club in his hometown, Manchester, NH.

Trivia

• In almost every single movie starring Sandler, there is a reference to his "egg-shaped head".

Filmography

Films

#	Title	Year	Role	Notes	Gross
1.	Going Overboard	1989	Schecky Moskowitz	first film role
2.	Shakes the Clown	1992	Dink the Clown		$115,103
3.	Coneheads	1993	Carmine		$21,274,717
4.	Airheads	1994	Pip		$5,370,000
5.	Mixed Nuts	1994	Louie		$6,798,240
6.	Billy Madison	1995	Billy Madison	Also writer	$25,588,750
7.	Happy Gilmore	1996	Happy Gilmore	Also writer	$38,624,000
8.	Bulletproof	1996	Archie Moses		$21,162,420
9.	The Wedding Singer	1998	Robbie Hart		$80,224,502
10.	Dirty Work	1998	Satan	Cameo (uncredited)	$9,975,684
11.	The Waterboy	1998	Robert "Bobby" Boucher Jr.	Also executive producer and writer	$161,487,252
12.	Big Daddy	1999	Sonny Koufax	Also executive producer and writer	$163,479,795
13.	Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo	1999		Cameo (voice only)	$65,535,067
14.	Little Nicky	2000	Nicky	Also executive producer and writer	$39,442,871
15.	The Animal	2001	Townie	Cameo and executive producer	$55,762,229
16.	Mr. Deeds	2002	Longfellow Deeds	Also executive producer	$126,203,320
17.	Punch-Drunk Love	2002	Barry Egan	Golden Globe nomination	$17,791,031
18.	Eight Crazy Nights	2002	Davey Stone	Animated, also Producer and Writer	$23,443,124
19.	A Day with the Meatball	2002	Himself	Short Subject
20.	The Hot Chick	2002	Mambuza Bongo Guy (uncredited)	Cameo, also executive producer	$35,016,147
21.	Anger Management	2003	Dave Buznik	Also Executive producer	$133,756,285
22.	Pauly Shore Is Dead	2003		Documentary
23.	Stupidity	2003		Documentary
24.	The Couch	2003	Couch Testing Guy	Short Film
25.	50 First Dates	2004	Henry Roth	Also Executive Producer	$120,776,832
26.	Spanglish	2004	John Clasky		$42,044,321
27.	The Longest Yard	2005	Paul Crewe	Also Executive producer	$158,115,031
28.	Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo	2005	Javier Sandooski (uncredited)	Cameo image and producer	$22,264,487
29.	Click	2006	Michael Newman	Also producer	$137,340,146
30.	Reign Over Me	2007	Charlie Fineman		$19,661,987
31.	I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry	2007	Chuck Levine	Also Executive producer	$119,514,150
32.	You Don't Mess with the Zohan	2008	Zohan	Post-production
33.	Bedtime Stories	2008	Skeeter Bronson	In production
34.	Untitled Judd Apatow Comedy	2009		In-development

Television

TV Show	Year/s	Role	Episodes
1. Remote Control	1987-1990
2. The Cosby Show	1984-1988	Smitty	4 episodes (The Locker Room (1987), Dance Mania (1987), The Prom (1988) and The Visit (1988)
3. The Marshall Chronicles	1990	Usher	1 Episode (Brightman SATyricon)
4. ABC Afterschool Specials	1990	Drug Dealer	1 episode (Testing Dirty)
5. Saturday Night Live	1991-1995	Various	44 episodes
6. Undeclared	2001	Himself	1 episode (The Assistant)
7. Couch	2003	Couch Testing Guy	1 episode
8. "Getaway"	2005	Henry Roth	1 episode ("Found")
9. The King of Queens	2007 (April 23)		1 episode
10. iCarly	2008 (February 23)		1 episode: "iGo To Hollywood" (made-for-tv movie)

Discography

Title	Year	Notes
They're All Gonna Laugh at You!	1993	2x Platinum
What the Hell Happened to Me?	1996	2x Platinum
What's Your Name?	1997	Gold
Stan and Judy's Kid	1999	Gold
Shhh...Don't Tell	2004

External links

• Official website
• Adam Sandler at IMDb
• Adam Sandler fanlisting
• Adam Sandler Quotes
• Adam Sandler's Charity Work

• Template:MySpace
• Template:MySpace (music)
• Adam Sandler "Serious Actor"