HOLLYWOOD – Adam Sandler reached a personal milestone a month ago when his wife of three years, Jackie, delivered their first child, Sadie Madison. On the eve of his 40th birthday, the funnyman couldn’t be happier. “The baby situation is fine, it’s great,” he says, smiling and nodding his head. “I love that kid. Every day I get more and more excited. And I feel comfortable with her. I just want her to feel comfortable with me. I’m a little bit klutzy.”
In the meantime, Sandler has a job to do. He’s promoting his newest comedy,”Click,” which reunites the actor with his “Wedding Singer” director and college buddy, Frank Coraci.
In “Click,” Sandler plays an overworked architect who barely has time for his adoring wife (Kate Beckinsale) and rambunctious children. When he happens upon a remote control with the power to fast-forward, pause and reverse time, he is relieved to think his worries are over. Uh-uh. Instead, Sandler’s Michael learns a valuable lesson about accepting all that life throws at you, including the curveballs.
Sandler explains that he immediately connected to the Steve Koren-Mark O’Keefe screenplay. “It’s amazing that I get to do what I do for a living, but I definitely am away from my family more than I’d like to be,” he says. “Looking back on the past 10 years of my life, I’ve been at work more than I’ve been at home, so I connected with the message of this movie.”
Sandler, who maintains his boyish good looks despite approaching the big 4-0, has known Koren since the early 1990s, when he was a cast member on “Saturday Night Live” and Koren was a page. “He would answer phones and when he’d give you a message, he’d say, `Oh yeah, I wrote a joke,’ and then he’d tell you a joke,” Sandler recalls.
Koren later co-wrote “Bruce Almighty” with O’Keefe. (The hit comedy starred Jim Carrey as a discontented man who accepts God’s challenge to trade places.) When he and O’Keefe pitched Sandler on “Click,” Sandler was sold even before he read the script. “That’s how I decided to do this script, just off three sentences about what the movie’s about,” he says. “It was a huge idea that sounded great. I knew it could be awesome.”
While “Click” is mostly a comedy with great special effects, it is also at its core a heartwarming drama in the vein of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” At one point in the film, the busy architect realizes that he didn’t spend enough time with his father. That part of the film touched Sandler, who lost his own father a few years ago.
“I had a different relationship with my real father than my character does with his in the movie,” he explains. “I wanted my dad to be at my house all the time. When he would go away, I would be like, `Dammit, I want to hang out with my father today.’ I never thought my dad was a pain in the ass like my character does.”
Asked what part of his life he would like to revisit, Sandler pauses for a moment, then responds, “I liked Little League a lot. Cracking a base hit always felt good. I’d like to get back to that day, running to first base, seeing my father actually think I’m a stud for a second.”
Sandler’s father actually did get to see his son become a stud, or at least a successful actor and producer. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in Manchester, N.H., Sandler had his first brush with comedy at age 17, when he performed during an open-mic night at a Boston comedy club. After graduation from New York University, he returned to the comedy club circuit and made some TV guest appearances.
While performing at a club in Los Angeles, he was spotted by comedian Dennis Miller, who recommended the young comic to “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels in 1990. Starting out as a writer, Sandler quickly became a cast member and created a number of memorable characters on the show, including Opera Man, Canteen Boy, Cajun Man and Gap Girl.
After five years with “SNL,” he embarked on a lucrative movie career. His first hit was “Billy Madison” and he subsequently starred in “Happy Gilmore,” “The Waterboy,” “Big Daddy,” “Little Nicky” and “Mr. Deeds.” His films were often panned by critics but loved by audiences. He swept Drew Barrymore off her feet in the 1998 romantic comedy “The Wedding Singer,” and the two were paired again in the 2004 hit comedy “50 First Dates.”
In 1993, Sandler released his first comedy album, “They’re All Gonna Laugh at You!” which earned a Grammy nomination. Subsequent albums have gone multiplatinum and he has sold more than 6 million copies to date. Proud of his Jewish heritage, Sandler wrote and recorded “The Chanukah Song,” which has become a holiday favorite, and produced and provided three of the voices in the animated Chanukah movie, “8 Crazy Nights.”
His box office clout has enabled him to team with other A-list stars. In 2003, he co-starred in the hit comedy “Anger Management” with Jack Nicholson. A risk-taker, he starred in the P.T. Anderson drama “Punch-Drunk Love,” earning critical praise. He subsequently starred in another adult-oriented drama-comedy, “Spanglish.” Sandler admits, though, that he feels more comfortable doing comedic scenes over dramatic ones. “I don’t like sitting in my trailer being depressed all day and looking at pictures,” he says. Sandler usually works with the same company of writers, directors and actors in most of his comedies. Many of the features he has produced through his Happy Madison production company have starred his old “SNL” pals.
“I wind up only working for him,” says David Spade, who starred in the Sandler-produced “The Benchwarmers” and “Joe Dirt.” “Basically, I’m in my
own little world. I don’t do that many other movies.”
So how does Sandler decide which films to star in and which to produce? “I don’t know,” he says. “If it’s something I feel I can do all right, I like being in those, and some that I think (Rob) Schneider and Spade would be funnier at than me, I tell them to do it. They say yes because I’m bigger than them.”
He next stars in Mike Binder’s drama “Empty City,” in which he plays a Sept. 11 widower who reconnects with a college friend.
Fatherhood has put Sandler on unsure footing, though. He hasn’t quite figured out how to change a diaper, but he proudly boasts that he is a great coach when his wife nurses the baby. “I say things like `good feeding,’ `way to go’ and `nice milk,”‘ he says, laughing.
