spring{fever} Posted May 10, 2008 Posted May 10, 2008 WikipediaEarly life Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York to Judy, a nursery school teacher, and Stanley Sandler, an electrical engineer.[2] He had a Jewish upbringing.[3] His family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire when he was five. There, 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. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991, and was also a member of the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity. Later in his career, he would often draw on his earliest memories in his comedy and movies. The song "Lunchlady Land" is dedicated to Silvia, the lunchlady at Hayden Dining Hall at New York University. In the movie Click, Sandler goes to Lake Winnipesaukee, a lake in New Hampshire where he went to summer camp. 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". Sandler started performing in clubs early on, taking the stage at his brother's urging when he was only 17. He was then discovered by comedian Dennis Miller, who caught Sandler's act in Los Angeles. Miller immediately 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, quickly making a name for himself by performing amusing original songs on the show, including "The Chanukah Song".[4] He left the show in 1995 to focus on his acting career. Sandler's first starring role was in 1989 when he starred in the movie Going Overboard. In 1995, he starred in Billy Madison, in which he plays a grown, though uneducated, man repeating grades 1–12 to earn his father's respect back, along with the right to inherit his father's multi-million-dollar hotel empire. He followed this movie up 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),[5] one of his first hits. Although most of his earlier films were almost universally despised by movie critics, many of his recent films, starting with Punch-Drunk Love (2002), have received almost uniformly positive reviews, leading many movie critics to believe that Sandler possesses considerable acting ability that they believed had been previously wasted on poorly written scripts and characters with no development.[6] Audiences have remained faithful to Sandler's slapstick humor to the tune of US$100-million-plus grossing movies. Sandler has moved outside the genre of goofball humor 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 also plays a loving father figure in Big Daddy (1999). During filming, he met Jacqueline Samantha Titone -- his future wife and mother of his daughter. Jackie was cast as the charming waitress from The Blarney Stone Bar. At one point, Sandler was considered for the part that went to Jamie Foxx in Collateral (2004).[5] He also was one of the finalists along with Jim Carrey and Johnny Depp for the role of Willy Wonka in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), but Depp in the end got the role.[5] He returned to more dramatic fare with Mike Binder's Reign Over Me (2007), a drama about a man who lost his entire family in 9/11 and rekindles a friendship with his old college roommate (played by Don Cheadle). Most recently, he starred in the movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), where he stars alongside Kevin James as a New York City fireman pretending to be gay keep up an insurance scam, so his best friend's children can have benefits. He recently finished production on his next comedy You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) a film written by Sandler, The 40-Year-Old Virgin writer-director Judd Apatow (who was an old roommate of Sandler's when both were starting out), and Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog creator Robert Smigel and directed by Happy Gilmore director Dennis Dugan about a Mossad agent who fakes his own death and moves to the United States to become a hair stylist. The film is set for a June 6, 2008 release.[7] He is currently working on Bedtime Stories (2008), a fantasy film being directed by Bringing Down the House director Adam Shankman about a stressed real estate developer whose bedtime stories he reads to his niece and nephew begin to come true, which will mark Sandler's first family film and first film under the Walt Disney banner.[8] English comedian Russell Brand will co-star. He is also set to star in Judd Apatow's third directorial feature, which is yet untitled. The film will costar Seth Rogen and Leslie Mann and filming is set to begin in the late summer or early fall of 2008, depending on the expected Screen Actors Strike of 2008.[9] Sandler has also been long-rumored to costar with Michael Madsen in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming World War II saga Inglorious Bastards.[10] In June 2007, it was announced that his production company, Happy Madison, had made a preemptive acquisition for Mitch Albom's screenwriting debut.[ Quote
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