Ask anyone to name the most famous comedy actors working today, and I don’t think it would take very long for Adam Sandler’s name to come up. From his Airheads and Saturday Night Live years up through his current Netflix-tethered partnership, the dude has been a household name for over 30 years, and is currently garnering some major Oscar vibes for his excellent work opposite George Clooney in Jay Kelly (currently streaming via Netflix subscription). He’s pretty much living proof that dreams can be achieved.
Because for the Brooklyn-born comedian, hitting a certain level of fame is what it was all about, and Eddie Murphy’s meteoric rise to the top is what Sandler strived for early in his own career. Sure, being funny helped, but as he put it in an interview alongside Clooney for The Sunday Times, it was all about getting recognized. In his words:
As a kid? I 100 per cent wanted to be famous. When I was 17 and got into stand-up I wanted what Eddie Murphy had — walking down a street, people going, ‘My God!’ That would let friends at school and your parents know you had made it, and that was my first goal. So yes, I wanted fame, but a couple of years in you also want to be good. And that becomes the goal.
Understandably, Adam Sandler wasn’t a 17-year-old stand-up comedian who dreamed of portraying dozens of characters with hearts of gold, or of winning awards through SAG-AFTRA, or of eventually making a life where he can work with his kids on a semi-regular basis. None of those matured thoughts tend to crop of that early in life. Instead, he wanted to be Eddie, because Eddie was the man!
Looking back, it’s almost as if Eddie Murphy was famous from the moment he exited his mother’s womb. He was making audiences laugh from the stage starting at age 15, was on the SNL stage before he was 20, and had three home run theatrical comedies with his first three attempts: 48 Hrs, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop. I didn’t have many aspirations for stand-up as a kid, and even I wanted to be Eddie Murphy, albeit with far less NSFW jokes.
Despite not landing a role in 1988’s Coming to America, another hugh notch in Murphy’s acting belt, Adam Sandler certainly did okay for himself throughout the 1990s, even if his rising star wasn’t hurtling quite as fast. Rather than releasing straightforward stand-up albums in the vein of Murphy’s Raw and Delirious, Sandler released ribald sketch-and-song albums that matched his juvenile big-screen characters like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. It was a winning combination, to say the least.
Audiences didn’t just want that side of Sandler, either, as evidenced by the number of romantic comedies and family films he began producing and starring in, and often opposite huge names like Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Aniston, to name a few. Voicing Dracula for the Hotel Transylvania movies also helped spread the actor’s appeal and vocal skills, and his eventual tag-teaming with Netflix truly cemented him as one of the most profitable comedy actors of the modern age.
In fact, despite starring in a small variety of movies that might have completely killed other actors’ careers — I’m looking at Jack and Jill and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, though I’m sure The Waterboy and Little Nicky would have tanked for others as well — Sandler has somehow kept his Teflon coating and avoided any lengthy career setbacks. What’s more, he often follows those critical and audience flops with his best dramatic work, from Punch Drunk Love to Funny People to Uncut Gems.
Compare that streak to Eddie Murphy, whose career has continuously been deflated by poor project choices. For all the respect and kudos that he deservingly maintains, it’s hard not to wonder what the 2000s would have been like for Murphy with different projects to explore. His newest project stems from Happy Gilmore 2 director Kyle Newacheck, so perhaps fans will get to see Sandler and Murphy sharing the screen among the 2026 movie releases if and when Playas Ball comes out.
Now having achieved that level of fame tnat he’d aimed for so early in life, Sandler says it can be the same as any other element of life in that nothing is 100% perfect all of the time. As he put it:
Look, no part of me, zero, wakes up and says, ‘Man, I wish that this hadn’t happened.’ But you have a real life. You have ups and downs just like everybody. People overlook that. You can be in the room but your head is spinning in another direction because of work. But that’s the same with every job.
Audiences can watch Sandler’s head spinning around as a loyal manager in Jay Kelly, which is available to stream on Netflix alongside plenty of the comedian’s other movies.
