The one thing Adam Sandler hates doing onscreen the most: “I’m going to let everybody down”
Taking on the role of an actor means being open to doing almost anything that is required of you. Of course, you can have boundaries, but the further you open yourself up, the further you’ll likely go.
Still, there’s always going to be something that induces a crippling sense of dread in an actor. For Adam Sandler, it’s something many of us do quite regularly. Not him, though. Don’t expect the actor to shed a tear unless he is instructed to do so – and even then, that’s going to prove to be quite the challenge.
Crying on command isn’t easy, you often have to get into a really emotional mindset to cry authentically, and once you start, you might find yourself unable to stop, bringing an inherent level of intimacy to a role, causing real-life emotions and fictional ones to get twisted together as they fight to be expelled, or perhaps they fight to be kept down.
Of course, some actors opt to have a special solution dropped into their eyes to induce artificial tears, but this can really sting. Real tears are sometimes the only way. Sandler dreads any script that requires him to sob because, in real life, he just doesn’t have the capability to do so.
It sounds prosperous to those of us who can cry at seemingly anything (and sometimes nothing at all), but some people really just don’t cry. Maybe their emotions come out in angry outbursts or obsessive-compulsive rituals instead. We all process things differently.
Sandler recently opened up about his hesitancy to cry on screen for a roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “When you see in the script that your character is crying out of control, you go, ‘Fuck, man.’ I don’t get excited for those. In real life, I think I’ve cried once — I’m just not a guy who cries a lot.”
You can’t be a good actor if you’re not willing to emote on screen, though, so Sandler just sucks it up. And it’s a good job he does, because it highlights what many people, like Paul Thomas Anderson, have been trying to prove for years – Sandler has a lot more range than people give him credit for.
Like many of us who dread a meeting or a pressing deadline, Sandler isn’t immune to workplace anxiety, admitting, “There were like three or four of those [scenes where he had to cry] in this movie,” in reference to his latest film, Jay Kelly. “The week before I’d go, ‘Fucking Wednesday’s going to suck. I’m going to let everybody down. How the fuck am I going to cry?’”
The Noah Baumbach-directed film sees Sandler star alongside acclaimed actors like George Clooney and Laura Dern, and clearly, his attempts to achieve realistic tears worked, because he is currently awaiting the results of various accolades, including a Golden Globe.
Whoever said Sandler was nothing more than a comedic manchild? Movies like Jack and Jill and Grown Ups might do little to prove his prowess, but he’s got a lot more integrity than it might appear. If he has to cry on screen, with much coaxing, he’ll do it.
