Adam Sandler’s favourite Adam Sandler characters: “I don’t know what my guys names are”
Love or hate him, you can’t deny how successful Adam Sandler has been over the years.
He’s made some of the best-loved comedies of the 1990s, from Happy Gilmore to The Waterboy to The Wedding Singer. As a ‘serious’ performer, though, he has wowed audiences with his turns in Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems. Although, based on some of his other work, it clearly helps to have either Paul Thomas Anderson or the Safdie brothers in your corner.
One of the reasons people despise Sandler in the way that they do is that he has a tendency to just play himself in every movie. So many of his performances consist of a middle-aged man-child with a potty mouth and a harsh Brooklyn accent. It might have been funny the first time, but the 51st time? Maybe not. Still, on his better days, the man behind ‘The Chanukah Song’ can produce a memorable character.
Speaking on the New Heights podcast, Sandler pondered which of his many creations would have their faces preserved forever on a fictional Mt Rushmore. “I never even thought about this,” he said. “It kinda changes. I love some of them one day and then the next day I’m like, ‘Why the fuck did I do that?’” After what was surely some heavy-duty soul-searching, the star relented and picked between his kids.
“Billy Madison is always got to be up there,” he said. “That was kind of the first movie that let me have kind of a little control.”
The focus of the 1995 movie of the same name, Madison is the son of a millionaire hotelier who is about to write him out of his will. To prove to his father that he isn’t a total screw-up, Billy goes back to school upon learning that his teachers were bribed to let him pass. He also said he enjoyed playing Robert ‘Bobby’ Boucher Jr, the titular character from The Waterboy.
“[I] love doing movies with Drew Barrymore and with Jennifer Aniston,” the former SNL man continued. “I don’t know what my guys’ names are in those, but whoever I was in those… whatever I did with those guys I’d like to put up there.”
This actually doesn’t narrow things down at all. Sandler has appeared in three movies with Aniston: Just Go With It, in which he plays a devious plastic surgeon; and the two ‘Murder Mystery’ films, in which Sandler and Aniston are a married couple. As for Barrymore, she has collaborated with the funnyman four times, most notably on The Wedding Singer. Robbie Hart, the title character, was the only one Sandler could remember by name.
Controversially, Sandler also said he wouldn’t mind if his eponymous character from Little Nicky made the cut. The gurning, stuttering, fringe-wearing spawn of Satan, Nicky, is widely regarded as not only one of Sandler’s worst inventions but one of the most irritating movie characters ever to disgrace a screen. Unfortunately, New Heights co-host Travis Kelce referred to the film as one of his ‘sneaky favourites’. Don’t say that, Travis. You’ll only encourage him.
With the exclusion of Barry Egan and Howard Ratner from this list, it’s clear that Sandler prefers his comedic characters to his more dramatic ones. Although the fact that he couldn’t remember some of their names hardly bodes well.
