Contents
[hide]
* 1 Early life
* 2 Acting career
* 3 Happy Madison Productions
* 4 Personal life
* 5 Filmography
o 5.1 Television
* 6 Discography
* 7 References
* 8 External links
[edit] Early life
Adam Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish family,[2] the son of Judy, a nursery school teacher, and Stanley Sandler, an electrical engineer.[3] When he was five, his family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, where 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. Sandler graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1988.[4]
Later in his career, he would draw on his earliest experiences for material for his comedy and movies. The song "Lunchlady Land" from his debut album They're All Gonna Laugh at You! is dedicated to Emalee, the lunchlady at Hayden Dining Hall at New York University.[citation needed]
[edit] 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". Early in his career, Sandler performed in comedy clubs, taking the stage at his brother's urging when he was only 17. He was discovered by comedian Dennis Miller, who caught Sandler's act in Los Angeles. Miller 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 Chanukah Song".[5] Sandler told Conan O'Brien on The Tonight Show that NBC fired him and Chris Farley from the show in 1995.[6]
Sandler's first starring role was in 1989, in the film Going Overboard. In 1994 he co-starred in Airheads with Brendan Fraser, and Steve Buscemi In 1995, he starred in Billy Madison, in which he plays a grown, though uneducated, man repeating grades 1–12 to earn back his father's respect, along with the right to inherit his father's multi-million-dollar hotel empire. In At the Movies, Siskel and Ebert gave the film a very bad review, and said of Sandler "...Not an attractive screen presence, he might have a career as a villain or a fall guy or the butt of a joke, but as the protagonist his problem is he creates the fingernails on the blackboard" with Siskel adding "...you don't have a good motivation for the character's behavior".[citation needed] He followed this film 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 his earlier films did not receive critical praise, his more recent films, beginning with Punch-Drunk Love (2002), have received more positive reviews. Roger Ebert, in his review of Punch-Drunk Love, concluded that Sandler had been wasted in earlier films with poorly written scripts and characters with no development.[7] Sandler has moved outside the genre of slapstick comedy 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 played a loving father figure in Big Daddy (1999). During filming, he met Jacqueline Samantha Titone—his future wife and mother of his two daughters -— who was cast as the waitress from The Blarney Stone Bar
adam sandler
adam sandler
adam sandler
adam sandler
adam sandleradam sandler
adam sandleradam sandler
adam sandler
