Adam Sandler: ‘Drew Barrymore Made It Seem Like Girls Were Allowed to Like Me in Movies’
According to Adam Sandler, his friend Drew Barrymore gets credit for his success as a leading man in rom-com movies. Read on to find out how the fan-favorite pair first teamed up and how the partnership impacted their acting careers. And what does his wife think about his many romantic scenes with Barrymore?
Drew Barrymore said it ‘was definitely not obvious’ that she and Adam Sandler should make movies together
Barrymore had established a name for herself in Hollywood by the time she finally got to meet Sandler. But she revealed in her memoir Wildflower that she had to “beg, borrow, and steal” to get her 50 First Dates co-star to see her in the mid-’90s.
When Sandler finally agreed to a meeting, they didn’t seem like a match right away. “It was definitely not obvious we were supposed to fit as well as I believed because we looked like a preppy and a punk set up on a bad blind date,” Barrymore wrote (per Vulture).
“But I shook his hand with fervor, thanked him for meeting me, and began to plead my case to him,” she explained. “I told him that, for whatever reason, I knew that we were supposed to become a team.”
And the result was The Wedding Singer, a film that changed the direction of each of their careers.
Drew Barrymore ‘made it seem’ Adam Sandler was a convincing lead in romantic movies
Sandler once said that Barrymore acting with him in romantic comedies changed how people saw him in his films. “Drew liking me made it seem like girls were allowed to like me in movies,” he said on The Howard Stern Show.
Meanwhile, Barrymore experienced a career comeback after the success of The Wedding Singer. She was a child actor superstar in the early ’80s, completely dazzling late-night icon Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show at the tender age of 7. But partying at a young age made her a pariah, and she had to prove herself again after teenage institutionalization and emancipation brought her to a new place in life.
According to her, Sandler gave her the chance she needed to prove how she’d matured into a young adult in the ’90s. And they’ve remained friends ever since.
Adam Sandler’s wife doesn’t mind his romantic movie scenes with Drew Barrymore
Barrymore and Sandler deny ever crossing the line from friendship to something else. And he once explained to Ellen Degeneres that there’s no discomfort for his wife Jackie Sandler — they married in 2003 — because she adores his co-star.
“It’s like the best thing that my wife loves Drew so much that she like encourages me. There’s no jealousy at all,” he explained (per Good Housekeeping). “She’s just like, ‘Get in there!'”
“We’re doing a nice romantic scene and I think I’m doing pretty great being as romantic as I can be and … I’m walking away and I just see my wife like (shaking her head) …,” he added. She told him, “Just please, for the sake of women, get in there and just look a little more alive.”
