Adam Sandler

***Adam Richard Sandler*** (September 9, 1966, Brooklyn, New York, USA) is an American comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1995, before going on to star in numerous Hollywood films, which have combined to earn more than $4 billion at the box office. Sandler had an estimated net worth of $420 million in 2021, and signed a further three-movie deal with Netflix worth over $350 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 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).

Some of Sandler's 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. However, Sandler has also received acclaim for his leading roles in drama films including Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Mike Binder's Reign Over Me (2007), Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories (2017), the Safdie brothers' Uncut Gems (2019), and Jeremiah Zagar's Hustle (2022), with the latter three ranked as major career highlights.

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 Russian-Jewish 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.

Early in his career, 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 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, making 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.

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. Actors who frequently appear in Sandler films include David Spade, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Chris Rock, John Turturro, Peter Dante, Allen Covert, Jonathan Loughran, and Jon Lovitz.

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, and David Spade. 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.