Comedy legend Adam Sandler has just celebrated his 60th birthday – but how much do you know about the star of movies such as Happy Gilmore?
Adam Sandler has been a fixture in Hollywood for 30 years now. He has made a hugely successful career in comedy movies, becoming a reliably bankable star, with his movies grossing more than $2 billion worldwide.
In recent years, Adam has signed movie deals with Netflix – a four film deal signed in 2021 was said to be worth $250 million – but his popularity remains undimmed, as the success of Happy Gilmore 2 showed last year.
This week, Adam has celebrated his 60th birthday. But how much do you know about Adam Sandler? Here are some facts you might not know about him.
He started out in comedy as a teenager
Adam’s entry into showbusiness came when he was just 17. After his brother encouraged him, Adam started performing stand-up comedy in clubs.
But alongside this, Adam was pursuing acting too, including gaining a bachelor’s degree in acting from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1988.
While Adam had a couple of small roles on TV in the late 1980s, including in The Cosby Show and game show Remote Control, it was the stand-up comedy that led to his big break. His act was caught by comedian Dennis Miller, who recommended Adam to Lorne Michaels, a producer on Saturday Night Live. this led to Adam being hired as a writer for the show in 1990, then becoming part of the on-screen team the following year.
He has been the biggest earner in Hollywood
Adam became a huge movie star in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with a peak coming in 2011-12 when, according to Forbes, he was the second highest earning actor in Hollywood – alongside Leonardo DiCaprio – pocketing $37 million.
But he eclipsed this in 2023 – by which time he had moved to making movies for Netflix – and, again according to Forbes, was the best paid actor in Hollywood, earning $73 million that year.
His production company is named after his breakthrough movies
Adam’s production company, Happy Madison, has made plenty of movies in recent years that he has written and starred in. The company’s name is a nod to the two movies that broke Adam in Hollywood – Happy Gilmore (1996) and Billy Madison (1995)
Adam’s wife and children sometimes appear in his movies
Adam has been married to his wife, Jackie, since 2003 and the couple have had two children, Sadie and Sunny. Over the years, Adam has given cameos in his movies to his wife and children several times. For instance, Sadie and Sunny provided voices on two of the Hotel Transylvania films.
Adam loves basketball and tries to play wherever he is
Adam has a long-standing love for basketball, and he is known for being a skilled player in the street version of the game – sometimes back pick-up basketball – played on outdoor courts with a tendency to make creative passes to his teammates. Indeed, he often seeks out pick-up games when he is on tour or location for movie shoots.
However, this love of basketball hasn’t been without cost to Adam. Over the years he has suffered two major injuries: a broken ankle and a shoulder injury that required surgery.
He’s an unlikely fashion icon
Adam has had a distinct style of dressing for many years, characterised by oversized t-shirts, baggy pants and Nike sneakers. And, perhaps proving the adage that if you wear something long enough you’ll be in fashion, in 2021 fashion bible Vogue named Adam that year’s fashion icon for his ‘grocery-run look’, also known as ‘Adam Sandler style’.
